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>1 IV. THE PRACTICAL TEACHERS' LIBRARY No. i 

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EDUCATIONAL 
CREEDS 



OF THE 



XIX™ CENTURY 



Edited by OSSIAN R LANG. 




E. U KELLOGG & CO., 

NEW YORK. Educational P«bllslie«, CHICAGO. 



Copyright 1898 by E. L. Kbllocc & Co. 



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1. Parker's Talks on Pedagogics $1.50 

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10. Tate's Philosophy of Education 1.50 

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12. Noetling's Notes on the Science and Art of Education - i .00 

13. Love's Industrial Education ^oo 

14. Payne's Nature Study i.oo 

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16. Payne's Lectures on Education i 00 

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EDUCATIONAL CREEDS 

<!9ir-THE 

Nov25i8ra ■ I 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 




EDITED BY 



OSSIAN H. LANG 

AUTHOR OF "outlines OF HERBART's PEDAGOGICS, 
"COMENIUS," '' BASEDOW," ETC. 




NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 

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.rO 



INTRODUCTION. 



There is something radically and fatally wrong with 
a teacher who has no educational creed. Education is a 
responsible and complicated work, which must be care- 
fully planned from beginning to end. There must be a 
definite aim and a clear understanding of the ways and 
means of reaching it. In other words, the educator 
must have in his mind some fixed principles of action. 
Without them he is like the captain of a ship without a 
compass. Every fad that stirs up a breeze may turn him 
from his course. If he is a routinist his pupils will be 
deprived of opportunities for educational development. 
In short, only a teacher who has clear and rational edu- 
cational convictions can be safely entrusted with the 
training of children. 

But the collecting and organizing of a body of sound 
educational doctrine is no easy t:isk. The professional 
aspect of teaching is as yet but imperfectly developed, 
and there is little agreement as to what constitutes an 
authoritative statement in matters pedagogical. Often 
people assume the direction of educational affairs with 
no other qualification than success in a political contest. 
Again, in teachers' meetings a bright speaker with just a 
superficial, if any, knowledge of pedagogy frequently 
impresses his audience more than a thoroughly grounded 

iii 



iv Introduction. 

educator who lacks ability in public address. Further- 
more, there is an abundance of books and periodicals, all 
professing to be pedagogical in character, which present 
almost as man}^ different and conflicting opinions con- 
cerning fundamentals as there are writers. No wonder 
the belief prevails that the theory of education is merely 
a matter of opinion, an arbitrary thing, concerning 
which one person's judgment is as good as that of 
another. 

Experience and extensive inquiry among students of 
education show that the most satisfactory source of ped- 
agogical insight and inspiration is to be found in the 
history of educational theories, or, more precisely speak 
ing, in the study of the pedagogic creeds of the masters. 
Here, then, is a wide and fruitful field for investigation 
for all who desire to get hold of the great truths upon 
which education rests. 

But however necessary the historical study of educa- 
tion may be, it is not all-sufficient. The world moves. 
The advance of civilization daily brings up new prob- 
lems. The ideals of humanity are constantly broaden- 
ing. The present, it is true, is the result of the past 
and cannot be rightly understood without a knowledge 
of its evolution. But it is also and decidedly a subject 
for special consideration, involving close scrutiny of the 
demands of present-day sociology and ethics. In for- 
mulating'one's pedagogical creed, therefore, one ought to 
take careful account of the conclusions arrived at by 
those who have given years of thought to the digging for 
educational truths and are best qualified to interpret 
the educational needs of the present. 

Nowhere has pedagogical inquiry received more atten- 
tion than in Germany. Its contributions to the litera- 
ture of pedagogy are therefore well worthy of the 
American teachers. Educational foundation truths are 



Introduction. v 

universal, and the best thought of Germany concerning 
them cannot but prove helpful to the seeker for light. 
But a creed involves more than universal principles. It 
is of little value if it does not strike at existing condi- 
tions. American education involves peculiar problems 
and possibilities. AVe need more than adaptation of 
European-bred pedagogical ideas and plans. Popular 
government on as grand a scale as ours is to be found 
nowhere else, and the education of the people in com- 
mon schools free to all is a reality only with us — even in 
free England it is still but an ideal. It is evident that 
we need a thoroughly American scheme of education, 
one that is specially and fully suited to the demands of 
our own civilizaiton. 

These and other considerations induced the editor, in 
the spring of 189G, to send out letters to a number of 
well-known students of the philosophy of education, ask- 
ing them to furnish for publication brief but compre- 
hensive statements of the educational ideals and plans 
upon whose application they based their hopes for the 
future of American civilization. The replies were 
printed in The School Journal under the general head 
of "Pedagogical Creeds,'' and after a careful revision 
are now collected and offered in book form. 

This century may well be called the Pestalozzian era 
in education. There is not one American educator rep- 
resented in this book who is not indebted either directly 
or indirectly to Father Pestalozzi. The indirect influ- 
ences may have come either from Froebel and Diester- 
weg, Avho elaborated the plans of Pestalozzi in a practi- 
cal way, or from Herbart and Beneke, who attempted to 
systematize the new educational gospel and make it the 
basis of a science of pedagogics. But they are to be 
discerned more or less clearly in every creed. It was 
thought, therefore, that the readers of this book would 



vi Introduction. 

appi'eciate summaries of the educjitioiial principles of 
the great German Pestalozzians. These latter creeds 
have been collected from various sources and an effort has 
been made to keep them as concise as possible, assuming 
that readers will look for aids to special and more ex- 
tensive study elsewhere. 

All these creeds reflect various conceptions of the 
fundamental truths of education. A comparative study 
of them will, it is hoped, serve to arouse greater interest 
in the study of theoretical pedagogics, to stimailate pro- 
fessional pride, and to invigorate in the hearts of thou- 
sands of American educators the sense of responsibility 
demanded for the task of training the future citizens of 
this country. 

OssiAN H. Lang. 

New York, 1898. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction iii 

The Pedagogical Creed of Professor John Dewey 5 

The Pedagogical Creed of John S. Clark 21 

The Pedagogical Creed of William T, Harris 36 

The Shorter Pedagogical Creed of B. A. Hinsdale 47 

The Pedagogical Creed of Earl Barnes 52 

The Pedagogical Creed of Colonel Francis W. Parker 54 

The Pedagogical Creed of James L. Hughes 57 

The Pedagogical Creed of W. N. Hailmann 67 

The Pedagogical Creed of L. Seeley , Ph.D 73 

The Pedagogical Creed of Richard G. Boone. . . : 78 

The Pedagogical Creed of E. W. Scripture 82 

The Pedagogical Creed of Louis H Jones . . 90 

The Pedagogical Creed of R Heber Holbroolc, Ph D 95 

The Educational Creed of Patterson DuBois 100 

A Bit of a Creed. By James P. Haney. M.D 107 

The Educational Creed of T. G. Rooper 112 

Some Element i of a Common Educational Creed. By George 

P. Brown 126 

Pedagogic Achievements of Pestalozzi 133 

Froebel's Pedagogical Creed 136 

Diesterweg's Pedagogical Creed 141 

Rules of Instruction 144 

Herbart's Pedngogical Creed 148 

Two Analyses of Herbart's Didactics 152 

Beneke's l*f^dagogical Creed 155 

Herbart and Beneke ; A Comparison of their Creeds with 

Reference to the Theory of Instruction . 157 

Yii 



I. THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 



of Professor John Dewey, 

University of Chicago. 
ARTICLE I. WHAT EDUCATION IS. 

I BELIEVE that nil education proceeds by the participa- 
tion of the individual in the social consciousness of the 
race. This process begins unconsciously 
almost at birth, and is continually shaping of 
the individual's powers, saturating his con- ^ ^ y* 
sciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and 
arousing his feelings and 
emotions. Through this 
unconscious education 
the individual gradually 
comes to share in the in- 
tellectual and moral re- 
sources which humanity 
has succeeded in getting 
together. He becomes 
an inheritor of the fund 



nd- ^A n„ 

;.. %l ilUln, 



ed capital of civilization. //jV, 
The most formal and '/'''' 
technical education in 
the world cannot safely 
depart from this general 
process. It can only or- 
ganize it ; or differen- 
tiate it in some particular direction 

5 




6 Educational Creeds, 

I believe that the only true eductition comes through 

the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of 

Social ^^^^ social situations in which he finds him- 

demands. ggjf^ Throngh these demands he is stimu- 
lated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his 
original narrowness of action and feeling, and to con- 
ceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of 
the group to which he belongs. Through the responses 
which others make to his own activities he comes to 
know what these mean in social terms. The value which 
they have is reflected back into them. For instance, 
through the response which is made to the child's in- 
stinctive babblings the child comes to know what those 
babblings mean ; they are transformed into articulate 
language, and thus the child is introduced into the con- 
solidated wealth of ideas and em.otions which are now 
summed up in language. 

I believe that this educational process has two sides 
— one psychological and one sociological ; and that 
Psychological i^either can be subordinated to the other or 
basis, neglected without evil results following. Of 
these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The 
child's own instincts and powers furnish the material 
and give the starting-point for all education. Save as 
the efforts of the educator connect with some activity 
which the child is carrying on of his own initiative in- 
dependent of the educator, education becomes reduced 
to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give cer- 
tain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. 
Without insight into the psychological structure and 
activities of the individual, the educative process will, 
therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to 
coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage ; 
if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, 
or arrest of the child nature. 



John Dewey. 7 

I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the 
present state of civilization, is necessary in order prop- 
erly to interpret the child's powers. The xhe social 
child has his own instincts and tendencies, ^^^^• 
but we do not know what these mean until we can tran- 
slate them into their social equivalents. We must be 
able to carry them back into a social past and see them 
as the inheritance of previous race activities. We must 
also be able to project them into the future to see what 
their outcome and end will be. In the illustration just 
used, it is the ability to see in the child's babblings the 
promise and potency of a future social intercourse and 
conversation which enables one to deal in the proper 
way with that instinct. 

I believe that the psychological and social sides are 
organically related, and that education cannot be re- 
garded as a compromise between the two, or 
^ . •^. i. .1-1 Psychological 

a superimposition oi one upon the other, social sides 

. related. 

We are told that the psychological definition 

of education is barren and formal — that it gives us only 
the idea of a development of all the mental powers with- 
out giving us any idea of the use to which these powers 
are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social 
definition of education, as getting adjusted to civiliza- 
tion, makes of it a forced and external process, and re- 
sults in subordinating the freedom of the individual to 
a preconceived social and political status. 

I believe each of these objections is true when urged 
against one side isolated from the other. In order to 
know what a power really is we must know 
what its end, use, or function is ; and this we of 

Cfl.Dfl.Citi.CS 

cannot know save as we conceive of the indi- 
vidual as active in social relationships. But, on the 
other hand, the only possible adjustment which we can 
give to the child under existing conditions, is that 



S Educational Creeds. 

which arises througli putting him in complete possession 
of all his powers. With the advent of democracy and 
modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell 
definitely just what civilization will be twenty years 
from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child 
for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for 
the future life means to give him command of himself; 
it means so to train him that he will have the full and 
ready use of all his capacities ; that his eye and ear and 
hand may be tools ready to command, that his judg- 
ment may be capable of grasping the conditions under 
which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained 
to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to 
reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is 
had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests 
— say, that is, as education is continually converted into 
psychological terms. 

In sum, I believe that the individual who is to be 
educated is a social individual, and that society is an 
Purpose of organic union of individuals. If we elimi- 
education. ^^^^ ^j^g social factor from the child we are 
left only with an abstraction ; if we eliminate the indi- 
vidual factor from society, we are left only with an inert 
and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin 
with a psychological insight into the child's capacities, 
interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every 
point by reference to these same considerations. These 
powers, interests, and habits must be continually inter- 
preted — we must know what they mean. They must be 
translated into terms of their social equivalents — into 
terms of what they are capable of in the way of social 
service. 



John Dewey, 



ARTICLE II. WHAT THE SCHOOL IS. 

I believe that the school is primarily a social institu- 
tion. Education being a social process, the school is 
simply that form of community life in which community 
all those agencies are concentrated that will ^^^* 
be most effective in bringing the child to share in the in- 
herited resources of the race, and to use his own powers 
for social ends. 

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of liv- 
ing and not a preparation for future living. 

I believe that the school must represent present life 
— life as real and vital to the child as that vital 
which he carries on in the home, in the ^o^ms. 
neighborhood, or on the playground. 

I believe that education which does not occur through 
forms of life, forms that are worth living for their own 
sake, is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality, 
and tends to cramp and to deaden. 

I believe that the school, as an institution, should 
simplify existing social life ; should reduce it, as it 
were, to an embryonic form. Existing life is 
so complex that the child cannot be brought s?Sety! 
into contact with it without either confusion 
or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by the multi- 
plicity of activities which are going on, so that he loses 
his own power of orderly reaction, or he is so stimulated 
by these various activities that his powers are prema- 
turely called into play and he becomes either unduly 
specialized or else disintegrated. 

I believe that, as such simplified social life, the 
school life should grow s^radually out of the 

. , f-, 1 n The meaning: 

home life; that it should take up and con- of social 

fl,ctiviti6S 

tinue the activities with which the child is 



already familiar in the home. 



lo Educational Creeds, 

I believe that it should exhibit these activities to the 
child, and reproduce them in such ways that the child 
will gradually learn the meaning of them, and be ca- 
pable of playing his own part in relation to them. 

I believe that this is a psychological necessity, because 

Continuity ^^ ^^ *^^ ^^^^^ ^^^J ^^ securing continuity in 

of growth. ^YiQ child^s growth, the only way of giving a 

background of past experience to the new ideas given 

in school. 

I believe it is also a social necessity, because the home 
is the form of social life in which the child has been nur- 
tured and in connection with which he has had his 
moral training. It is the business of the school to 
deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in 
his home life. 

I believe that much of present education fails because 
it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as 

Wron? ^ form of community life. It conceives the 
aims. school as a place where certain information 
is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, 
or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of 
these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; 
the child must do these things for the sake of some- 
thing else he is to do; they are mere preparations. As 
a result they do not become a part of the life experienec 
of the child and so are not truly educative. 

I believe that the moral education centers upon this 

conception of the school as a mode of social life, that 

Moral *^^® ^^^^ ^^^ deepest moral- training is pre- 

training. cisely that which one gets through having to 
enter into proper relations with others in a unity of 
work and thought. The present educational systems, 
so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it 
difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral 
training. 



John Dewey, ii 

I believe that tlie child should be stimulated and 
controlled in his work through the life of stimxaus 
the communit3^ and control. 

I believe that under existing conditions far too much 
of the stimulus and control proceeds from the teacher, 
because of neglect of the idea of the school as a form of 
social life. 

I believe that the teacher's place and work in the 
school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The 
teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or 
to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a 
member of the community to select the intiuences 
which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly 
rtisponding to these influences. 

I believe that the discipline of the school should pro- 
ceed from the life of the school as a whole 
and not directly from the teacher. "^ * 

I believe that the teacher^'s business is simply to de- 
termine, on the basis of larger experience and riper 
wisdom, how the discipline of life shall come to the 
child. 

I believe that all questions of the grading of the child 
and his promotion should be determined by reference 
to the same standard. Examinations are of 
use only so far as they test the child's fitness 
for social life and reveal the place in which he can be 
of the most service and where he can receive the most 
help. 

ARTICLE III. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF EDUCATI0:N'. 

I believe that the social life of the child is the basis 
of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or 
growth. The social life gives the uncon- concentra- 
scious unity and the background of all his ^^°"' 
efforts and of all his attainments. 



12 Educational Creeds. 

I believe that the subject-matter of the school cur- 
riculum should mark a gradual differentiation out of 
the primitive unconscious unity of social life. 

I believe that we violate the child^s nature and render 
difficult the best ethical results by introducing the 

special child too abruptly to a number of special 

studies, studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., 
out of relation to this social life. 

I believe, therefore, that the true center of correla- 
tion on the school subjects is not science, nor literature, 
nor history, nor geography, but the child's own social 
activities. 

I believe that education cannot be unified in the study 

of science, or so-called nature study, because apart from 

human activity, nature itself is not a unity; 

"of nature in itself is a number of diverse objects 

ra a ion. .^ gpace and time, and to attempt to make it 
the center of work by itself is to introduce a principle 
of radiation rather than one of concentration. 

I believe that literature is the reflex expression and 

interpretation of social experience ; that hence it must 

follow upon and not precede such experi- 

ure. ^j^^g^ Yt^ therefore, cannot be made the basis, 

altliough it may be made the summary of unification. 

I believe once more that history is of educative value 

in so far as it presents phases of social life r.nd growth. 

It must be controlled by reference to social 

History, j.^^ When taken simply as history it is 
thrown into the distant past and becomes dead and 
inert. Taken as the record of man's social life and 
progress it becomes full of meaning. I believe, however, 
that it cannot be so taken excepting as the child is also 
introduced directly into social life. 

I believe accordingly that the primary basis of educa- 
tion is in the child's powers at work along the same 



John Dewey. 13 

general constructive lines as those which have brought 
civilization into being. 

I believe that the only way to make the child con- 
scious of his social heritage is to enable him xi^e primary 
to perform those fundamental types of ac- ^^^*** 
tivity which make civilization what it is. 

I believe, tlierefore, in the so-called expressive or 
constructive activities as the center of correlation. 

I believe that this gives the standard for the place of 
cooking, sewing, manual training, etc., in the school. 

I believe that they are not special studies which are 

to be introduced over and above a lot of others in the 

way of relaxation or relief, or as additional 

accomplishments. I believe rather that they social 

activity, 
represent, as types, fundamental forms of 

social activity; and that it is possible and desirable that 

the child's introduction into the more formal subjects 

of the curriculum be through the medium of these 

activities. 

T believe that the study of science is educational in so 
far as it brings out the materials and pro- science 
cesses which make social life what it is. teacMng. 

I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the 
present teaching of science is that the material is pre- 
sented in purely objective form, or is treated as a new 
peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to 
that which he has already had. In reality, science is of 
value because it gives the ability to interpret and con- 
trol the experience already had. It should be intro- 
duced, not as so much new subject-matter, but as 
showing the factors already involved in previous experi- 
ence and as furnishing tools by which that experience 
can be more easily and effectively regulated. 

I believe that at present we lose much of the value of 
literature and language studies because of our elimina- 



14 Educational Creeds. 

tion of the social element. Language is almost always 
treated in the books of pedagogy simply as 
the expression of thought. It is true that 
language is a logical instrument, but it is fundamentally 
and primarily a social instrument. Language is the 
device for communication ; it is the tool through which 
one individual comes to share the ideas and feelinofs of 
others. When treated simply as a way of getting in- 
dividual information, or as a means of showing off 
what one has learned, it loses its social motive and end. 
I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of 
studies in the ideal school curriculum. If education is 

life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific 
Development ^ , <? i i t 

of aspect; an aspect of art and culture and an 

aspect of communication. It cannot, there- 
fore, be true that the proper studies for one grade are 
mere reading and writing, and that at a later grade, 
reading, or literature, or science, may be introduced. 
The progress is not in the succession of studies, but in 
the development of new attitudes towards, and new 
interests in, experience. 

I believe, finally, that education must be conceived as 

a continuing reconstruction of experience ; 

tion of that the process and the goal of education 
experience. , ,, , , . 

are one and the same thing. 

I believe that to set up any end outside of education, 
as furnishing its goal and standard, is to deprive the 
educational process of much of its meaning, and tends 
to make us rely upon false and external stimuli in deal- 
ing with the child. 



ARTICLE lY. THE NATURE OF METHOD. 

I believe that the question of method is ultimately 
reducible to the question of the order of development of 



John Dewey. 15 

the child's powers and interests. The law for pre- 
senting: and treatino- material is the law im- 

° * The law 

nlicit within the child's own nature. Because of 

1 method, 

this is so I believe the following statements 

are of supreme importance as determining the spirit in 
Avhich education is carried on : 

1. I believe that the active side precedes the passive 
in the development of the child nature; that expression 

comes before conscious impression; that the 

Expression 
muscular development precedes the sensory; before 

\ „ ■ impression, 

that movements come beiore conscious sen- 
sations; I believe that consciousness is essentially motor 
or impulsive; that conscious states tend to project 
themselves in action. 

I believe that the neglect of this principle is the cause 
of a large part of the waste of time and strength in 
school work. The child is thrown into a passive, re- 
ceptive, or absorbing attitude. The conditions are such 
that he is not permitted to follow the law of his nature; 
the result is friction and waste. 

I believe that ideas (intellectual and rational pro- 
cesses) also result from action and devolve for the sake 
of the better control of action. What we term reason is 
primarily the law of orderly or effective action. To 
attempt to develop the reasoning powers, the powers of 
judgment, without reference to the selection and ar- 
rangement of means in action, is the fundamental fal- 
lacy in our present methods of dealing Avith this matter. 
As a result we present the child with arbitrary symbols. 
Symbols are a necessity in mental development, but 
they have their place as tools for economizing effort; 
presented by themselves they are a mass of meaningless 
and arbitrary ideas imposed from without. 

2. I believe that the image is the great instrument of 
instruction. What a child gets out of any subject pre- 



1 6 Ediicational Creeds. 

sented to him is simply the images which he himself 
forms with regard to it. 

I believe that if nine-tenths of the energy at present 

Power of directed towards making the child learn 

imagery, certain tilings were spent in seeing to it 

that the child was forming proper images, the work of 

instruction would be indefinitely facilitated. 

I believe that much of the time and attention now 
given to the preparation and presentation of lessons 
might be more wisely and profitably expended in train- 
ing the child^s power of imagery and in seeing to it that 
he was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing 
images of the various subjects with which he comes in 
contact in his experience. 

3. I believe that interests are the signs and symptoms 
The child's ^^ gi'owing power. I believe that they rep- 
interests, i-esent dawning capacities. Accordingly the 
constant and careful observation of interests is of the 
utmost importance for the educator. 

I believe that these interests are to be observed as 
showing the state of development which the child has 
reached. 

I believe that they prophesy the state upon which he 
is about to enter^ 

I believe that only through the continual and sympa- 
thetic observation of childhood's interests can the adult 
enter into the child's life and see what it is ready for, 
and upon what material it could work most readily and 
fruitfully. 

I believe that these interests are neither to be hu- 
mored nor repressed. To repress interest is to sub- 
stitute the adult for the child, and so to weaken intel- 
lectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, 
and to deaden interest. To humor the interests is to 
substitute the transient for the permanent. The inter- 



John Dewey. 17 

est is always the sign of some power below; the impor- 
tant thing is to discover this power. To humor the 
interest is to fail to penetrate below the surface, and its 
sure result is to substitute caprice and whim for genu- 
ine interest. 

4. I believe that the emotions are the reflex of 
actions. 

I believe that to endeavor to stimulate or 
arouse the emotions apart from their corresponding 
activities is to introduce an unhealthy and morbid state 
of mind, 

I believe that if we can only secure riglit habits of 
action and thought, with reference to the good, the 
true, and the beautiful, the emotions will for the most 
part take care of themselves. 

I believe that next to deadness and dullness, formal- 
ism and routine, our education is threatened with no 
greater evil than sentimentalism. 

I believe that this sentimentalism is the necessary 
result of the attempt to divorce feeling from action. 



ARTICLE V. THE SCHOOL AIS'D SOCIAL PROGRESS. 

I believe tl:^at education is the fundamental method 
of social progress and reform. 

I believe that all reforms which rest simply up*on the 
enactment of law, or the threatening of cer- special 
tain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical P^o^rress. 
or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile. 

I believe that education is a regulation of the process 
of coming to share in the social consciousness ; and that 
the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this 
social consciousness is the only sure method of social 
reconstruction. 



1 8 Educational Creeds. 

I believe that this conception has due regard for both 
the individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly indi- 
x^o vidual because it recognizes the formation of 
Ideals. ^ certain character as the only genuine basis 
of right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes 
that this right character is not to be formed by merely 
individual precept, example, or exhortation, but rather 
by the influence of a certain form of institutional or 
community life upon the individual, and that the social 
organism through the school, as its organ, may deter- 
mine ethical results. 

I believe that in the ideal school we have the recon- 
ciliation of the individualistic and the institutional 
ideals. 

I believe that the community's duty to education is, 
therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and pun- 
ishment, by social agitation and discussion, 

duty of society can regulate and form itself in a more 

socie y. ^^ j^gg haphazard and chance way. But 
through education society can formulate its own pur- 
poses, can organize its own means and resources, and 
thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the 
direction in which it wishes to move. 

I believe that when society once recognizes the possi- 
bilities in this direction, and the obligations which these 
possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the 
resources of time, attention, and money which will be 
put at the disposal of the educator. 

I believe it is the business of every one interested in 
education to insist upon the school as the primary and 
most effective interest of social progress and reform in 
order that society may be awakened to realize what the 
school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of en- 
dowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly 
to perform his task. 



John Dewey. ig 

I believe that education thus conceived marks the 

most perfect and intimate union of science 

and art conceivable in human experience. science and 

art 
I believe that the art of thus giving shape 

to human powers and adapting them to social service is 

the supreme art; one calling into its service the best of 

artists; that no insight, sympathy, tact, executive power 

is too great for such service. 

I believe that with the growth of psychological ser- 
vice, giving added insight into individual structure and 
laws of growth; and with growth of social science, add- 
ing to our knowledge of the right organization of indi- 
viduals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the 
purposes of education. 

I believe that when science and art thus join hands 
the most commanding motive for human action will be 
reached; the most genuine springs of human conduct 
aroused, and the best service that human nature is 
capable of guaranteed. 

I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not 
simply in the training of individuals, but in ^^^ teacher's 
the formation of the proper social life. office. 

I believe that every teacher should realize the dignity 
of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for 
the maintenance of proper social order and the securing 
of the right social growth. 

I believe that in this way the teacher always is the 
prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true 
kingdom of God. 




20 Educational Creeds, 

[XoTE. — The isolation of the teacher is a thing of the past. 
The processes of education have come to be recognized as fuuda 
mental and vital in any attempt to improve human conditions and 
elevate society. 

The missionary and social reformer have long been looking to 
education for counsel and aid in their most difficult undertakings. 
They have viewed wtth interest and pleasure the broadening of 
pedagogy so as to make it include not only experimental physiol- 
ogy and child-study, but the problems of motor training, physical 
culture, hygiene, and the treatment of defectives and delinquents 
of every class. 

The schoolmaster, always conservative, has not found it easy 
to enter this large field; for lie has often failed to realize how 
rich and fruitful the result of such researches are; but remarkable 
progress has been made, and a changed attitude on the part of 
educators is the result. And how could it be otherwise when the 
oldest and most renowned institutions of learning in the land are 
giving a conspicuous place to the newer and better pedagogy in 
tbeir curriculum ? 

Another, and perhaps tlie latest, phase of the educational move- 
ment is the conviction that the school is a social institution, that 
its aims are social, and that its management, discipline, and 
method of instruction should be dominated by this idea. The 
mere contemplation of the proposition must be accompanied in 
the mind of every candid person by a sense of our shortcomings 
in this respect. 

Dr. Dewey's Pedagogical Creed shows how the concentrated 
agencies of the school should bring the child to share in the in- 
herited resources of the race. It points out how discipline and 
method should be influenced to this end. 

Samuel T. Dutton, 
Supt. of Schools, Brookline, Mass. 



II. THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 

of John- S. Clark. 

The substance of my pedagogical creed is contained 
in the following comments on the creed of Professor 
John Dewey, of the University of Chicago : 

The pedagogical creed of Professor Dewey, as pub- 
lished in The School Journal of January 16, 1897, is a 
notable contribution to educational literature. Since 
Spencer^s famous essay, over thirty years ago, there 
have been few statements of the basis, function, and 
purposes of education that are so sound, so Dewey's 
sensible, and so suggestive as this word from *^^^®'^* 
Chicago University. Educational thinkers and workers 
owe Professor Dewey a genuine debt for his comprehen- 
sive setting forth of the problem as he sees it. 

We have here one of the first satisfactory statements 
of the interrelation between the psychological and the 
social aspects of education. Investigation into chil- 
dren's individual capacities, interests, and habits is to 
be pursued, we are told, not wholly out of deference to 
the innate self, but, above all, for the sake of discovering 
the most feasible ways of helping the individual to 
receive and to give his share of the life of the race. 
"All education," says Professor Dewey, "proceeds by 
the participation of the individual in the social con- 
sciousness of the race.'" 

TJiree Prmciples. — I take it that the professor's main 
points of emphasis are three : 

21 



22 



Educational Creeds. 

: his personal capaci- 



1. The individuality of the chih 
ties, interests, and powers. 

2. The social environment of the child as a world of 
conscious intelligence ; the gradual understanding of 
this social world by the individual through coming into 
conscious touch with its best aspects. 




John S. Clark. 

3. The creative activities of the child as the point of 
concentration in his educational development ; the crea- 
tive activities as the means through which the individ- 
ual does thus gradually come into the full command of 
himself and the full appreciation of the social whole of 
which he is to become a part. 



John S. Clark. 23 

The reasons given for the importance of considering 
the child^s individuality are reasons which ought to do 
much towards keeping modern child-study on a sensible 
basis. According to Professor Dewey, the child's j)er- 
sonal instincts, interests, capacities, and hab- 
its merit attention and consideration, on the ity of the" 
ground that these, under normal conditions, ^^^^^* 
indicate, directly or indirectly, the probable lines of 
adaptability to social needs and conditions. Child-study 
acquires a new value when children begin to be studied, 
not simply for the sake of cataloguing them as speci- 
mens, but chiefly for the sake of seeing along what lines 
they are likely to be most susceptible to influences of 
environment, and along what lines they are likely to be 
most capable of effective reaction on their natural and 
their social environment through creations for the social 
benefit. These points are indeed of vital importance. 

If I may be allowed to carry the thought a step fur- 
ther, let the idea of selection by the teacher be added 
right here. Let child-study include in its q^^^ 
legitimate range the sympathetic observation ^^^^y- 
of children to discover what elements in the social 
environment appeal most to tlie higher elements of a 
particular child's make-up. Let child-study include in 
its range also observation to discover which of the child's 
natural aptitudes and habits of creative activity are 
correlated with the finest feeling and highest thinking; 
into what sorts of activity the child seems able to put 
the largest expression of his best self. In other words, 
let child-study recognize the idealizing powers of the 
child, and his responsiveness to ideals, as well as to bare, 
uncharacterized facts. 

If we once assume what Professor Dewey certainly 
will grant, that in this life some things are better worth 
having and doing than other things, it is certainly of 



24 Educational Creeds, 

great importance for teacliers to make, if possible, a 
Qualitative q^ialitative as well as a quantitative analysis 
analysis, ^f ^j-^g personalities with which they deal, and 
to consider the best way of bringing out the best in 
these personalities. When we are told that the process 
and the goal of education should be the continual re- 
construction of experience through bringing the indi- 
vidual more and more into harmony with the conscious- 
ness of the race we must assume that it is the race 
consciousness of the best things that is meant. 

It seems to me that from the very first the teachers 

task of selecting the influences which shall 
^/nsifht!*^ play on the child ought to be aided by a 

better knowledge of the comparative respon- 
siveness of the child's simple animal nature, on the one 
hand, and of his higher spiritual nature on the other 
hand. Such insight, where it does exist, means, of 
course, an immense saving of time and labor, and an 
avoidance of some discouraging failures. 

Just here I may be permitted to say that Professor 
Dewey's definition of the function of the teacher seems 

to reduce the influence of the teacher's per- 
pe?sonaUty. tonality to unnecessarily low terms. His 

feeling in the matter is apparently that of 
vigorous reaction and revolt against the autocracy of 
the schoolmaster, as he used to be. But does not the 
present revolt against arbitrariness and dogmatism 
carry us a trifle too far ? Is it wise to leave the child 
so entirely to his own devices, and make him work out 
his own salvation at such expensive outlay of time and 
futile effort ? I believe that there should still be a use 
for the teacher over and above the rather vague "selec- 
tion of influences " to bear on the child. It ought to be 
possible still for some ideas to be caught by contact with 
a superior mind, for some knowledge to be gained 



John S. Clark. 25 

through another^s experience, as well as through the 
child's owu experience.* If this were not true, we 
older folks, who ended our school life many years before 
present educational methods came into repute, would 
be reduced to the humiliating necessity of declaring 
that our own school days were barren of profit. 
Proclamation of the absolute ineffectiveness of former 
methods in education is a sort of boomerang, which 
turns in its course and comes back to belabor every 
grown-up reformer with the assertion of his own mental 
outfit and enfeebled mental condition. 



SOCIAL e:n^vironment of the child. 

When we consider Professor Dewey's second point 
of emphasis, the social environment of the child, we see 
how far he is in advance of most of his con- 
temporaries in educational literature, and Environ- 
how far our educational discussion has ad- 
vanced during the last few years. He does not overlook 
or undervalue the importance of the natural environ- 
ment. He sees the importance of the study of nature 

* " Now whatever may be said of pedagogical ideals and apparatus, 
there is one factor in education that has remained essentially un- 
changed from age to age. This factor is the personal— the native, 
iudefluable something to the teacher that wins and inspires the pupil. 
Of such paramount importance is this quality that nobody thinks of 
disputing the dictum of Jules Simon — ' The master is the school.' 
Mr. Emerson has said substantially the same thing — ' It matters 
little what you learn, the question is with whom you learn.' Dean 
Stanley insisted that the dullest, most vicious boy at Bugby could 
not come in contact with Dr. Arnold without receiving a moral and 
intellectual impulse. 

" It was the personal element that told most effectively, for many of 
his contemporaries were his equals in intellect and his superiors in 
scholarship— the personal element which it is so difficult to charac- 
terize and so impossible t(j measure. 'The system is lost in the 
man,' says Dean Stanley; 'the recollections of the head-master of 
Rugby are inseparable from the recollections of the personal guide 
and friend of his scholars.' "— Levekett Wilson Spring, D.D., on 
" Mark Hopkins, Teacher." 



2 6 Educational Creeds. 

for herself and in herself, but he rightly recognizes the 
social environment, the world of human activity, as the 
most significant source of help in the education of the 
child. 

Here again I ask leave to carry his expressed thought 
one stage further. I feel that he would certainly not 
Social overlook the absolute need of a distinct recog- 
ideais. nition of social ideals in any plan or course 
of education that undertakes to bring the individual and 
society into truly harmonious relations. He says that 
the school, in its presentation of social conditions, should 
be simply the natural outgrowth of the home. This 
could not be better put, if only the homes of our public- 
school children were ideal homes. 

But what is the fact ? 

I assume that we are speaking of homes and schools 
in cities and large towns. The great mass of our 
Actual school population is actually found sur- 
conditions. mounded by distinctly urban conditions ; 
statistics show that the tendency of population is more 
and more towards centralizing in cities. The schools of 
the future are, without doubt, to be made up more and 
more of children born and reared in cities. How can 
the actual average city home, the home of the average 
public-school child, be counted worthy of being model 
and pattern for the school itself? Heaven forbid! 
The average city home is, on the contrary, a bit of social 
environment whose lessons and influences too often 
need prompt neutralizing and replacing by influences of 
a higher and finer sort that have to be consciously, in- 
tentionally selected, directed, and emphasized by the 
teacher. The very existence of laws for compulsory 
school attendance is so much emphasis on the recog- 
nized inefficiency of the average home as a preparation 
for reputable citizenship. 



John S. Clark, 27 

Speaking broadly, there is, at the present time, greater 
need of the school influencing the home through ideals 
of proper living, through bringing the child gchooi 
in contact with distinctly high ideals of social influences. 
life, than of the home influencing the school. In other 
words, the school should mean not simply the average 
home, broadened out or raised to the wtli power, but 
rather the home elevated and inspired by ideals dis- 
tinctly higher than those of the average city household. 

Again, Professor Dewey seems to overstate — in one 
direction — the matter of surrounding the child with the 
real active conditions of society, as the most preparing 
helpful influence under which to grow. The ^°^ ^®* 
author goes so far as to say that the school is life, and 
that it onght not to be regarded as a preparation for 
life. I think the extreme ground taken here shows a 
healthy, human reaction from the lifeless formality of 
the old-fashioned schools. But the school of long ago 
had its element of rightness after all. School life is 
indeed real life; but it is, at the same time, in another 
sense, only a preparation for later and a much broader 
life. Any one day^s adult life is real in one sense, and 
in another sense a preparing for the next day. 

" . . . . All experience is an arch wlierethro' 
Gleams tliat untravelled world whose margin fade 
Forever and forever while I move." 

To regard the school as real social living, to intro- 
duce real life into the school, there must be brought in 
the selfishness, which animates this real life, 
and the competitive rivalry, which makes ^^Jefined!^^ 
such a demand for preparatory drills and 
training in all the important activities. I cannot help 
feeling that the attempt to introduce real life into the 
school, to coTistruct the school on the basis of real life, 



2 8 Educational Creeds. 

would quickly destroy its main function as a social in- 
stitution. The real life of the streets of Chicago, New 
York, or Boston, or of any town, could not, profitably, 
be brought into the school, for that very life needs the 
school and the church at one end of the social scale, and 
the police court at the other end, to protect it from it- 
self. If Professor Dewey means that the school should, 
in its discipline and its occupations, typify the finer 
social ideals, and seek to surround the child with those 
influences that especially appeal to his higher nature, 
then I agree with him. I feel that in our educational 
discussions we have only just entered upon the con- 
siderations of the social bearing of education, and while 
Professor Dewey's remarks touching the school and its 
relations to the home, and to social life in general, are 
very suggestive, I feel that they will bear further exposi- 
tion. 

NEW BASIS OF CONCENTRATIOK. 

It is a great encouragement to find Professor Dewey 
putting into such vigorous affirmations the doctrine 

that the point of educational concentration 
Activities. ^^^ elementary schools should be upon the 

social or constructive activities of the child 
himself. I heartily hope this utterance of his is setting 
people to thinking along this line. Recent discussions 
of correlation and concentration have been too largely 
confined to the comparative values of the so-called 
"form studies" and the "content studies." By pre- 
senting the creative activities of the child in their 
social aspects as the true point of concentration Pro- 
fessor Dewey has carried the whole discussion of con- 
centration, and of educational value as well, up to a 
much higher and more inclusive plane than it has 



John S, Clark. 29 

hitherto occupied. From this higher standpoint both 
the form studies and the content studies become of 
especial importance, and each class takes a new vahie, 
as both chisses are seen to be closely interrelated as 
necessary means for the proper development of the 
individual towards social ends. Let me quote a charac- 
teristic passage or two : 

"I believe accordingly that the primary basis of edu- 
cation is in the child's powers at work along the si me 
general constructive lines as those which have brought 
civilization into being. 

" I believe that the only way to make the child con- 
scious of his social heritage is to enable him to perform 
those fundamental types of activity which make civil- 
ization what it is. 

" I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or 
constructive activities as the center of correlation." 

But Professor Dewey's enumeration of the lines of 
educational work involving the exercise of these typical 
constructive activities can hardly express his 
full thought. Curiously enough, though he actfvS^s. 
seems to have in mind the constructive ac- 
tivities, which are the basis and framework of a pro- 
gressive civilization, he mentions only " cooking, sew- 
ing, manual training, etc.," as studies involving the 
typical activities of the race. I want to round out his 
own words and include those products of the creative 
activities which actually measure the quality, the value, 
of Jiiuman civilization — human art. Cooking, sewing, 
and building construction must, naturally, be under- 
stood as having chiefly to do with merely physical needs 
and desires, and as contributing to the upbuilding of a 
civilization of an essentially material sort. But this is 
not all of civilization. It is only the substructure of a 
true civilization. 



30 Educafiotml Creeds. 

The civilization which Professor Dewey must have 
meant is not manifested solely in effective means of 
Creative securing food, shelter, and clothing, for the 
ability, comfort and culture of men's bodies. Be- 
sides all this, it shows itself in the creations of litera- 
ture, music, painting, sculpture, architecture. These, 
the various phases of art, are the real measure of man's 
distance from his savage progenitors. And these, as 
they exist to-day, conspire with the art instincts of each 
new-born man to urge him on to new art activities in 
his own person. 



ART ACTIVITIES IN EDUCATION. 

It seems to me that the ground explicitly taken by 
Professor Dewey logically necessitates his advancing 
this one step farther and recognizing: 

1. The importance of A7't as the embodiment of 

much the better part of the experience of 
ronmentr ^^^® race, and forming an essential part of 
the child's social environment, with which 
the school ought to bring him into close touch. 

2. The importance of the aesthetic nature of the indi- 
vidual, its responsiveness to the art creations of the 
race, and the importance of giving him opportunity for 
creative self-expression in forms of art of the very 
highest social significance and value. 

Art, as a part of the child's social environment, is 

pre-eminently important, because it is that part of the 

,, ,. . environment in which nature and human 
Idealization. -.mi 

nature are united. The gradual growth of 

art has involved not only distinct mental imaging of 

outward facts, but also continual idealization of these 

outward facts. By the idealization of a fact I mean 



John S. Clark. 31 

that combination of insight and creative imagination 
which grasps not merely the existing and actual, but 
also the possible, and then, imaging the possible, pro- 
ceeds to create a new embodiment for it. In this sense, 
the transformation of a parched Western valley into 
fertile farm lands, by means of irrigation, is a piece of 
idealization on the part of the civil engineer and his 
workmen. The transformation of a quantity of quar- 
ried stone, timber, etc., into a great Congressional Li- 
brary is a piece of idealization on the part of the archi- 
tect and his artisans. The transformation of a bit of 
stretched canvas and a handful of powdered minerals 
of different colors into a Sistine Madonna is a piece of 
idealization on the part of the great paiiiter. 

It is emphatically true, as Professor Dewey says, that 
"the image is the great instrument of instruction. 
What a child gets out of any subject pre- 
sented to him is simply the images which he ^' 
himself forms with regard to it.^^ In the light of this 
thought, it must seem all the more desirable that the 
child shall gradually learn to image ideals, as well as 
literal facts; that he shall learn to use his own simple, 
primitive images of things as they are, for material 
wherewith to build up, in imagination, things as they 
need to be and may be. And this is idealization — the 
completest revelation of himself which the individual 
can possibly make. 

The art activities, as practicable for children — mod- 
eling, drawing, painting, " making''— are the simpler 
forms of the activities practiced by the 
world's art workers; these are the A B C of fju^^tfi! 
all the world's art. It is when these creative 
and constructive art activities are included in the point 
of educational concentration in elementary schools that 
we shall be using with the truest economy all the forces 



32 Educational Creeds. 

and opportunities of the school combined with all the 
best activities of the individual. 

The constructive social activities must, therefore, 
have a distinctly ideal element in them, in order to ex- 
ercise and utilize the best part of the child and make 
his powers and capacities most promising for the social 
good. 

What Professor Dewey says of the active element in 

child nature taking precedence of the passive muscular 

The active activity, preceding the sensory, is very im- 

eiement. portant and suggestive. His energetic pro- 
test against vague emotion and sentiuientalism, and 
against the dangerous separation of feeling from action 
to some definite purpose, is a protest that is greatly 
needed at the present time. I wish that he had gone 
somewhat further in this direction, and made some 
definite statements about the basis of conscious mental 
training, and the necessity for it. 

Medical authorities tell us that, physiologically speak- 
ing, nerve fibers are the only things that can be actually 
trained. We are told that muscle in itself can- 
discoveries^ not, properly speaking, be trained. All that 
muscle can do is to contract and relax in obe- 
dience to nervous impulse. The human body is so con- 
stituted that the simpler fundamental, muscular move- 
ments, breathing, winking, etc., are performed automatic- 
ally, as they are in animals. As the aft'erent nerves bring 
their sense- messages to the nerve centers, the efferent 
nerves respond with commands to muscular reaction, pro- 
ducing " motor discharge " of energy. Experiments with 
frogs and other animals have many times demonstrated 
the exquisite automatic balance between action and 
reaction in the nervous system of creatures of simple 
organization. Authorities in anatomy and physiology 



John S. Clark. 33 

tell ns that as the nervous system hecoiiies more com- 
plicated, first by the multiplication of nerve centers 
connected with each other, and then by the connection 
of all these with a sort of central power-house of nervous 
energy in the brain, the creature becomes more and 
more capable of controlling the reaction of his own 
nerves. An impulse to motor discharge may be checked, 
or entirely altered in character and application, as a 
result of the consensus of impulse from the many con- 
nected nerve centers, and especially as a result of calling 
in the decisive power of the will to settle the balance. 
One person responds instantly with the aj^propriate, 
instinctive nervous reaction to each new sensation. 
His mind is certainly active, but its activity is of a con- 
fused, helter-skelter sort. His thinking is desultory, for 
each change of sight or sound changes the direction of 
his reaction on his environment. 

Another person has gradually learned to make a dis- 
tinction between one sort of reaction and another, 

assuming more and more positive control 

,, , T . XT 1 Self-control, 

over the whole nervous organism. He learns 

to say to himself, " Pay no attention to this message 

just received, give attention to that one. Do not react 

(with a turn of the head) to that impression of sound 

(testifying that some one has entered the room), but 

listen to the person who is talking to you, or image 

clearly and consecutively the ideas for which the words 

stand in the book you are reading/^ 

This person's mind, we say, is self-controlled, disci- 
plined. This person's mind is not a mere machine, set 
going by the heat generated in the contact of environ- 
ment with physical organism and working automatic- 
ally. It is something that he controls and uses. 

Now, if it is this self-controlled, disciplined sort of 



34 Educational Creeds, 

mind which we wish to develop in children, it would 
appear that mental discipline and training 

discipline, should be essential elements in educatioif. 
The suggestive analogy between the growth 
of the individual and the progress of human civilization 
sometimes gets twisted out of gear right here. We find 
ourselves assuming that the civilization of the race 
simply " growed/^ like Topsy, and without human effort, 
and that in order that the individual may participate in 
the experience of the race all he has to do is to keep the 
gates of his senses wide open and wait for mental per- 
fection to come in. But, as a matter of fact, neither 
the civilization of the race nor the rounded develop- 
ment of the individual can be depended upon to come 
by that royal road. 

Civilization has been largely the fruit of deliberate 
effort, and positive overcoming of the poorer by the 

Individual- better, the lesser by the greater. Civilization 
^^^' means not go-as-you-please individualism, 
but conscious, purposive individualism, moving to the 
highest social good under law and order. I am con- 
vinced, simply on the ground of race development, that 
the education of the individual ought to have a strong 
element of the overcoming, the mastering, spirit about 
it. The will ought to be invoked for getting more and 
more perfect control of the nerves, training these into 
prompt obedience to the commands that come from the 
central office of the brain. Then all the activity of 
which the individual is capable, or of which he becomes 
capable, can be brought into positive harmony with the 
man's ideals, directed in accordance with the mind's 
judgment, and made outwardly effective in the highest 
degree for the general social welfare. 

And this brings us directly to the recognition of the 
fact that the child is something far and away from be- 



John S. Clark. 35 

ing the mere sum of his physical attributes. We have 

to recognize that he possesses a spiritual 

nature, that transcends his physical powers spiritual 
,1 T n J- • 1 element, 

or environment — that he has a divinely 

implanted soul. 

As I have before taken occasion to observe, the quick- 
ening of this indwelling spirit in a child is the vital 
point in his education, and its development needs the 
help of all the highest spiritual influences at our dis- 
posal. Spirit is acted upon more by the incentive of 
what is itself spiritual than through the influence of 
what is itself material. We need the influence derived 
from association with nature; we need the help of the 
finest ideals crystallized for us through the ages into 
works of art, and forming a spiritual world within or 
upon the material world ; above all do we need the help 
of the finest attainable personality in the teacher. The 
influences of these, wisely brought to bear on the 
creative aesthetic activities of the growing child, will 
certainly make the school what Professor Dewey believes 
it should be, the most important of all social institu- 
tions. 

The more Professor Dewey's Pedagogical Creed is 
studied in all its implications, it will be seen that it stands 
not for educational revolution, or anarchy, 
but for positive, sensible, educational evolu- ^evSution^^ 
tion and construction in conformity to the 
highest social ideals; and in this sense it might well be 
taken, not as a personal creed, but as the creed of the 
New Education. 



III. THE PEDAGOaiCAL CREED 



of William T. Harris, 



U. S. Commissioner of Education. 

Having been asked to write a brief statement of my 
educational creed, I set down what I consider to be im- 
portant principles, without, however, taking 
^de^ined*^ the pains to arrange them in any systematic 
order. Many years ago, on being asked for a 
definition of education I described it as the process by 

which the individual 
is elevated into the spe- 
cies, and explained this 
brief and technical defi- 
nition by saying that 
education gives the in- 
dividual the wisdom 
derived from the ex- 
perience of the race. 
It teaches him how his 
species, that is to say, 
mankind in general, 
have learned what na- 
ture is and what are its 
processes and laws, and 

,„ „ „ by what means nature 

W. T. Harris. *^ , . , , ^ 

may be made useful to 

man. This lesson of experience is the conquest of nature. 

36 




William T. Harris. 37 

The second and more importuiit lesson is, however, 
derived from the experience of human nature — the 
manners and customs of men, the motives 
which govern human action and especially experience 
the evolution or development of human insti- 
tutions, that is to say, the combinations of individuals 
into social wholes. By these combinations the individual 
man is enabled to exist in two forms. First, there is his 
personal might, and second, there is the reinforcement 
which comes to him as an individual through the social 
unit, the family, civil society, the State, the Church. 
The individuals endow the social unit in which they live 
with their own strength, and hence the strength of the 
w^hole institution is far greater than that of any indi- 
vidual. In fact, the combined strength is greater than 
the aggregate of the individual strengths which compose 
it. Ten Robinson Crusoes acting in conjunction are 
equal not only to ten individual Crusoes, but to ten 
times ten. 

It follows from this view of education (as a means 
of fitting man, the individual, to avail himself of the 
knowledge of his species or race obtained 
through two kinds of experience) that I must ^Jeresy?'^ 
set a very high value on the accumulated wis- 
dom of the race. I must think that the man as an un- 
educated individual is infinitely below man as an 
educated individual. I must think, too, that a system 
which proposes to let the individual work out his edu- 
cation entirely by himself — Kasper Hauser style — is the 
greatest possible mistake. Rousseau^s doctrine of a 
return to nature must also seem to me the greatest 
heresy in educational doctrine. But with this educa- 
tional principle, so far as stated above, one does not 
have any protection against a wrong tendency in method 
which may be justified on the ground that thecontribu- 



$8 Educational Creeds. 

tion of the social whole is the essential thing, and the 
contribution of the individual the unessential thing. 

Keeping in view that essential thing, educational 
method is prone to neglect too much the individual 
peculiarities, and above all to undervalue the 
exclusively self-activity of the pupil in gaining knowl- 
edge. It does not consult the likes and dis- 
likes of the pupil, and cares little or nothing for his 
interest in his studies. It is content if it secures the 
substantial thing, namely, that the individual should 
learn the wisdom of the race and the lesson of sub- 
ordinating himself to the manners and customs of his 
fellow men. It is content if it makes him obedient. 
He must obey not only the laws of the State but the 
conventional rules of etiquette. Above all hje must 
obey his parents, his teacher, and his elders. This re- 
quirement of obedience carried out to the extent de- 
manded in China, and to a less degree in monarchical 
countries of Europe and in this country until very 
recently, is based on a too exclusive contemplation of 
the social ideal as the chief object of education, and I 
hasten to add the statements needed to correct its in- 
completeness. 

developme:n'T according to self-activity. 

All education is based on the principle of self-ac- 
tivity. The individual to be educated has the poten- 
tiality of perfection in various degrees and 
^x^tllii?^ can attain this by his self-activity. A material 
body or a mechanical aggregate of any kind 
:, can be modeled or formed or modified externally into 
some desirable shape. But this external moulding is not 
education. Education implies as an essential condition 
the activity of a self. It follows from this that while 



William T. Harris. 39 

the end of education must be the elevation of the in- 
dividual into the species, that this can only happen 
through the self-activity of the individual. 

I saw this principle clearly before I saw the entire 
principle to which it is a part, namely, the relation of 
the individual to society. I can readily 
sympathize with scores of my friends and aSfsociety. 
companions in education who see this prin- 
ciple of self-activity but have not yet arrived at the 
insight into that function of self-activity of the in- 
dividual which is to so act that it may reinforce itself 
by the self activity of institutions or social wholes. 

Following this necessity of the individual I believe 

that the 2:reatest care should be taken not to 

^ , Arrest 

arrest the development accordins^ to self- , of 

^ == deyelopment. 

activity. Any harsh, mechanical training 

will tend to arrest development of the child. 

There is for human beings as contrasted with lower 
animals a long period of helpless infancy. This long 
period is required for the development of man's adapta- 
tions to the spiritual environment implied in the habits, 
modes of behavior, and the arts of the social com- 
munity into which man is born. Professor John Fiske 
has shown the importance of this fact to the theory of 
evolution as applied to man. It is the most important 
contrijjution which that doctrine has made to pedagogy. 
If the child is at any epoch of his long period of help- 
lessness inured to any habit or fixed form of activity 
belonging to a lower stage of development the tendency 
will be to arrest growth at that standpoint and to make 
it difficult or next to impossible to continue the growth 
of the child into higher and more civilized forms of 
soul-activity. Any overcultivation of sense-perception 
in tender years, any severe and long-continued stress 
upon the exercises of the memory, will prevent the rise 



40 Educational Creeds. 

of the soul into spiritual insight. I therefore distrust 
many of the devices invented by teachers of great will- 
power to secure thoroughness in the learning of the 
studies in the primary school. 



THREE STAGES OF THIN"KING. 

My doctrine of rational psychology holds that there 
are three stages in the development of the think- 
Sense- ^^^S power. The first stage is that of sense- 
perception, perception, and its form of thinking conceives 
all objects as having independent being and as existing 
apart from all relation to other objects. It would set 
up an atomic theory of the universe if it were questioned 
closely. 

The second stage of knowing is that which sees 
everything as depending upon the environment. E very- 
Seeing thing is relative and cannot exist apart from 

relations, -^.g relations to other things. The theory of 
the universe from this stage of thinking is pantheistic. 
There is one absolute unity of all things. It alone is 
independent and all the others are dependent. They 
are phenomenal and it is the absolute. Pantheism con- 
ceives the universe as one vast sea of being in which the 
particular waves lose their individuality after a brief 
manifestation. 

The third stage of thinking arrives at the insight that 

true being is self-active or self-determined. It is there- 

Tije fore self-conscious being and is above in- 

absoiute. tellect and will. Inasmuch as intellect is in 
its essential nature altruistic, or that which makes itself 
its own object and gives objective being to others, it 
follows that its views of the world sees the necessity of 
presupposing a divine reason as the absolute which 



IVilliam T. Harris. 



41 



creates in order that it may share its being with others 
in its own image. 

According to my thinking, the most important end of 
education is to take the jDupil safely through the world- 
theories of the first and second stages, 
namely, sense-perception and the relativity ^"insSt^*^ 
doctrine of pantheism, nj) to the insight into 
the personal nature of the absolute. All parts and 
pieces of school education and all other education 
should have in view this development of the intellect. 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE MORAL WILL. 

Corresponding to this elevation of the intellect up 
to the point where it sees true being to be self-active 
is the doctrine of the moral will which ^^^^^ 
should be reached by the method of discipline ^'^^• 
adopted by the school. Intellectual insight is the high- 
est result of the theoretical training, and a moral will is 
the highest result of the practical side of school educa- 
tion. The kindergarten work treats with the requisite 
degree of tenderness the early manifestations of will- 
power in the child. It gradually develops in his mind 
the necessity of self-restraint for the sake of co-opera- 
tion with his fellow pupils. He must inhibit or hold 
back his tendency to act without respect to the require- 
ments of the work of the kindergarten. There develops 
in the child the power of self-control for rational ends. 

The discipline of the elementary school builds up in 
a very powerful manner the sense of individual re- 
sponsibility. Each child feels that he is 
responsible not only for what he does inten- re^poliiwi- 
tionally, but what he neglects to do in the ^^^' 
way of performing school duties. This is the most 



42 Educational Creeds. 

powerful influence which a well-disciplined school 
exercises towards the 2)roduction of character. The 
child subdues his likes and dislikes, adopts habits of 
reo^ularity, punctuality, silence, and industry. His in- 
dustry takes the form of two kinds of attention: first, 
the critical attention to the work of the class and the 
criticisms of the teacher, and second, to the mastery 
of his own set task by his unaided labor. 

Every self-active being is a will in so far as it lifts 
itself out of the chain of causation, in which it finds 

itself in nature, and acts in such a way as to 
of_ modify this chain of action in accordance 

with its inclination or ideas. It can originate 
modifications in the chain of causality and thus be- 
come responsible for the series of effects which flow 
from its action. It becomes a moral will when it is 
conscious of this power of origination; it knows itself 
responsible. Immersed in mere feeling, in mere likes 
and dislikes, interests and antipathies, it is not a moral 
will, although it originates new causal series in the 
world. But it becomes conscious of its responsibilities 
when it observes in itself the power to inhibit or hold 
back the chain of causality in which it finds itself and 
resist its inclinations and the force of its habits. It can 
absolutely refuse to act, and this demonstrates its abso- 
lute freedom. Freedom does not mean the power to 
do everything, for that is omnipotence. It means the 
power to refuse to transmit external impulses and forces 
by lending them its efforts. 



ADJUSTMENT OF INDIVIDUAL TO SOCIETY. 

School education and all education is a delicate 
matter of adjustment, inasmuch as it deals with two 



IVilliam T. Harris. 43 

factors, spontaneity and prescription. The latter tends 
to determine the whole individual by the re- 
quirements of the social whole. The former and ^ 
tends to make the child a bundle of caprice ^"^^"^ ^^^' 
and arbitrariness by giving full course to his spontaneity 
or self-activity. The concrete rule of pedagogy is to 
keep in view both sides, and to encourage the child to 
self-activity only "in so far ^^ as the same is rational, 
that is to say, in so far as his self-activity enables him to 
reinforce himself with the self-activity of the social 
whole, or, to put it in another way, it enforces pre- 
scription upon the child only in so far as the same is 
healthful for tlie development of his self-activity. 

Every pedagogical method must therefore be looked 
at from two points of view : first, its capacity to secure 
the development of rationality or of the true 
adjustment of the individual to the social ^^metffi^^ 
whole, and secondly, its capacity to strengthen 
the individuality of the pupil and avoid the danger of 
obliterating the personality of the child by securing 
blind obedience in place of intelligent co-operation, 
and by mechanical memorizing in place of rational 
insight. 

I believe that the school does progress and will pro- 
gress in this matter of adjusting these two sides. But 
I find and expect to find constantly on the road to prog- 
ress new theories offered which are more or less neg- 
lectful of the delicate adjustment between these two 
factors of education. 



PROGRESS TOWARDS FREEDOM. 

I believe that the school as it is and as it has been 
is and has been a great instrumentality to lift all 
classy of people into a participation in civilized life. 



44 Educational Creeds. 

I believe that the world progresses and has progressed 
towards freedom. In this respect I think 
of ^ that every form of civilization that has pre- 
vailed in the world has some important light 
to throw upon the questions of pedagogy. On the whole 
onr new and newest education is better able to help 
children whose souls are imprisoned in their bodies and 
who are dull and stupid. The education of to day 
knows better than the education of yesterday how to 
arouse such children by the application of devices that 
stimulate their interests and self-activity. It knows, 
too, better how to hold back the child who is filled with 
selfishness and teach him to subordinate his self-seeking 
to the interest of the social whole. More than the child 
of Europe, Asia, or Africa, the American child is pre- 
cocious in will-power. In improperly conducted kin- 
dergartens one sees very often two or three bright 
children monopolize the attention not only of all the 
other small children but also of the teacher. Snch child 
gardens remind ns of kitchen gardens choked with 
weeds. 

THE FIELD OF CHILD-STUDY. 

Finally, a word in my creed regarding child-study. 
I have hoped and still hope from the child-study 

movement a thorough investigation of the 
of question of arrested development. In view 

of what I have said above regarding the long 
period of helpless infancy and of the importance of 
keeping the child open to educative influences as loiig 
as possible, it becomes necessary to ascertain the effect 
of every sort of training or method of instruction upon 
the further growth of the child. For instance, do 
methods of teaching arithmetic by the use of blocks, ob- 
jects, and other illustrative material advance the child 



IVilliam T. Harris. 45 

or retard liim in his ability to master the higher branches 
of mathematics ? What effect upon the pupil's ability to 
understand motives and actions in history does great 
thoroughness in arithmetical instruction have; for in- 
stance, does it make any difference whether there is 
only one lesson in arithmetic a day or one each in writ- 
ten arithmetic and in mental arithmetic ? Does a care- 
ful training in discriminating fine shades of color and 
in naming them, continued for twenty weeks to half a 
year in the primary school, permanently set the mind of 
the pupil towards the mischievous habit of observing 
tints of color to such an extent as to make the mind 
oblivious of differences in form or shape and especially 
inattentive to relations which arise from the interaction 
of one object upon another ? Questions of this kind are 
endless in number, and they relate directly to the forma- 
tion of the course of study and the school programme. 
They cannot be settled by rational or a priori pyschology, 
but only by careful experimental study. In the settle- 
ment of these questions one would expect great assist- 
ance from the laboratories of physiological psychology. 

Notwithstanding my firm faith in the efficiency of the 
school to help the child enter upon the fruits of civil- 
ization, I am possessed with the belief that to 
the school is due very mucli arrested develop- cMW ^u^y. 
ment. Not very much success in this line 
can be expected, however, from those enthusiasts in child- 
study who do not as yet know the alphabet of rational 
psychology. Those who cannot discriminate the three 
kinds of thinking are not likely to recognize them in 
their study of children. Those who have no idea of 
arrested development will not be likely to undertake 
the careful and delicate observations which explain why 
certain children stop growing at various points in dif- 
ferent studies and require patient and persevering effort 



46 



Educational Creeds. 



oil the part of the teaclier to help them over their men- 
tal difficulties. The neglected child who lives the life 
of a street arab has become cunning and self-helpful, 
but at the expense of growth in intellect and morals. 
Child-study should take up his case and make a thor- 
ough inventory of his capacities and limitations and 
learn the processes by which these have developed. Child- 
study in this way will furnish ns more valuable informa- 
tion for the conduct of our schools than any other fields 
of investigation have yet done. 




The U. S. Bureau of EDUCATI0^', Washington, D. C. 



THE SHORTER PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of B. A. Hinsdale, 

Professor of Pedagogy, University of Michigan. 

There is a Shorter Catechism. Why not a Shorter 
Creed? And why not write it according to the ancient 
fashion, in tri^oartite form ? 

I. THE CHILD OR THE MliN^D. 

Education begins with the being to be educated, that 
is, the child, and it culminates in his higher nature, 

that is, his mind. The child^s mind is ac- 

' . , . Meaning 

tive, seli-active we say, and through its own of 

. . , - . *^ , T education. 

activity makes increase, grows, enlarges, de- 
velops. Furthermore, this increase, enlargement, or 
development is education. The common conception of 
education makes it consist of attainments or knowledge, 
but the proper conception makes it mental growth or 
power of mind. The dynamical view is far superior to 
the static view. 

The mind is not equally energetic or active at all 
times; for example, in sleep it is less active than when 
awake, and it is commonly thought, perhaps, 
at such times to be altogether at rest. Be- activity, 
sides, there are such things as mental la- 
tency, subconsciousness, and unconscious cerebration, the 
nature of which, and the relations of which to mental 

47 



48 



Educational Creeds. 



activity and growth, are not very fully understood as 
yet. But there is no denying the fact that the activity 
of the mind is the cardinal fact to be considered in 
mental growth. Physical rest, and mental rest (which 
really means another form of activity, or a less intense 
activity), limits mental growth in important ways, but 
the limit is rather a condition than a cause. We may 
say, then, that the mind grows only as it is active. 





>v. 




■ .:'' ' 


.^ m. 




f 






/ 




1" 






4' 



B. A. Hinsdale. 

Mental activity, therefore, is the factor to be first 
considered in all education that rises above the material 
nature of man. It comprehends the intellect, the feel- 



B. A. Hinsdale. 49 

ings, and the will. It encompasses intellectual, moral, 
and religious education. Subject to the law of inherit- 
ance, a man's soul makes his character through its own 
activity. 

II. EDUCATIOX-STUFF, OR STUDIES. 

When we say that the child's mind is self-active we 
mean that it contains the principle of activity within 
itself. In this respect it is unlike a block of yqvoXs 
stone or wood, which is itself dead and pow- of contact, 
erless. But we do not mean that the child's mind, if 
left to itself, will act and grow. On the other hand, it 
does not act, and cannot act, until something capable of 
arousing its activity is brought into contact with it. At 
first, this something consists of objects external to the 
mind itself; the stimulus is an outer stimulus. Objects 
capable of exciting the mind to act are as necessary to 
mental activity as the self-active mind itself. The mind 
cannot act in vacMO. Accordingly, the growth of the mind, 
or its education, in the first stage depends absolutely 
upon the establishment of points of contact between the 
mind and its environment. AYith such points of con- 
tact mental growth begins. From such points of con- 
tact all mental growth must proceed. To change the 
form of expression, objects that may be known are as 
necessary to knowledge as a knowing mind. Knowledge 
is the product when these two factors are brought into 
proper contact or relation. 

All intellectual education must be developed from the 

primal contacts of the mind with the surrounding world. 

At first, these contacts are between the mind 

, , - , , , , • , , Knowledge, 

and the natural world, and they constitute 

the beginning points of all scientific knowledge. Next, 

and it is not long after, contacts are established with the 

human world, the world of mankind, and these become 



50 Edmational Creeds. 

centers of historical, political, social, and moral knowl- 
edge. At a later day, the mind begins to recognize it- 
self, or it establishes points of contact between itself and 
itself, and these contacts are the beginnings of philosoph- 
ical knowledge. But while knowledge, strictly speaking, 
is the result flowing from the establishment of contacts 
between the mind and objects of knowledge, men have 
nevertheless long been in the habit of regarding these 
objects, at least in many of the forms that they assume, 
as knowledge itself. 

III. THE TEACHER. 

To teach is to bring the mind of the child and educa- 
tion-stuff into due relation. It is an act of mediation 

„ . . between the two terms that are essential to 
Beginning's 

of mental activity and to growth of mind. At 
education. . . 

first, the child has, strictly speaking, no 

teacher; his mind fixes itself upon the objects about it. 
What these objects are, depends upon his environment. 
But whatever they are, they are the beginnings or 
sources of mental activity and of education. 

Nature, the Avorld, life, is the child's first teacher. 
The mother or the nurse is a teacher only in so far as 
she is an object of observation and study, and as she 
Teachers of contributes to or controls the child's envi- 
the child, ponment. As selecting and arranging the 
objects that make up, or help to make up, the environ- 
ment, the mother or nurse influences the child's men- 
tal activity and development; but she acts, and can act, 
at this stage of progress, only through environment. 
This is no doubt something, a good deal, in fact, but it 
is not what is commonly called teaching. The mother 
or nurse does not think that she is teaching ; she does 
the work unconsciously while attending to something 



B. A. Hinsdale. 51 

else, as the child's comfort or pleasure. Still it is a 
type of all teaching. 

Mental activity is observation, memory, comparison, 
analysis, imagination, thought. Moreover, these acts are 
all personal ; no one can do them for another. Every 
person must image his own ideas, form his 
own judgments, think his own thoughts. acts are 
All that one person can do for another in p®"°^* • 
respect to these activities is incidental and secondary. 
A cannot form an idea for B, but he may put before 
him an object that will excite its lormation. A cannot 
form an opinion, make up a judgment, or reach a 
conclusion for B, but he may bring to his attention 
matter that will lead to such result. The teacher's 
function as an instructor is exhausted, therefore, with 
the selection and presentation of appropriate education 
material. As already said, the process is really typified 
by the partial control which the mother or nurse has 
over the infant's surroundings. Here, however, she is 
conscious in doing her work. 

Accordingly, the teacher is a mediator, standing 
between the pupil, on the one hand, and the world of 
knowledge, on the other. It may be asked. 
Has not the teacher power over the child as the 
well as over education material ? Undoubt- 
edly. The teacher may lead the pupil to knowledge as 
well as bring knowledge to the pupil; but this in no- 
wise affects the case, since the material, in any event, 
must be chosen and arranged. 

The whole pedagogical field is therefore divisible into 
three parts, viz. : the Child, Studies, and the Teacher. 



/l/t/C 




Ann Arbor. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 

of Earl Barnes, 

Professor of Education in Leland Stanford, Jr., University, Cal. 

I BELIEVE that this is a sane, well-ordered universe, 

and that the natural tendencies in it are towards higher 

Upward foi'"^s. I believe that the problem of the 

tendencies, educator is to find these large unward-moving 

tendencies in civilization, and to do all in his power to 

foster and encourage them. 




Pkof. Earl Barnes. 



52 



Earl Barnes. 53 

I believe these laws can be discovered through a 
study of the liistory of ideas and ideals, and through a 
direct study of the natural history of huuum Natural 
beings from childhood to old age. I believe ^^^q^J^^^ 
the great problem of this immediate genera- beings, 
tion is to work out the natural history of human beings 
as a basis for educational activity, and I believe that 
when this is fairly accomplished we shall find that what 
we have is a philosophy of life and life's possibilities, 
not materially different from philosophies held in the 
past, but perfected in many details. 



XOuUL/ V^^LA/vOL^ 



Lkland Stanford, Jr., University. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of Col. Francis ^Y. Parker, 

Prin. Chicago Noi*mal School. 

I AM obliged to give my pedagogical creed in a very 
general way. 

First, I have unbounded faith in the development of 
the human race. I believe that the p9,th and goal of 
Community niankind is education. The end and aim of 
Ufe. education is community life. The child 
should be a citizen to all intents and purposes the 
moment he enters the schoolroom ; or, in other words, 
he should become through teaching and training an 
efficient citizen of his little community. 

I believe that the past has given us a vast inherit- 
ance of good that we should use for the future. I also 
believe that, comparatively speaking, we have 
^ossiWuS. i^^^ begun to study the science of education 
and apply art: that most things done in the 
past and that which we are now doing are comparatively 
crude. I believe that the only consistency in this world 
worthy the name is constant change in the direction of 
a better knowledge of humanity and of the means by 
which humanity rises to higher levels. I believe that 
the art of teaching is the art of all arts, it surpasses 
and comprehends all other arts, and that the march of 
progress is upon the line of the realization of infinite 
possibilities for the good and growth of mankind. 

54 



Francis W. Parker. 



55 



I believe in personal method in this sense that each 
teacher must discover methods by the study of psychol- 
ogy and all that pertains to the development 
of the human being ; that he must apply methods? 
that which he thinks is for the best good of 
his pupils, and by supplying the best he will learn 
something better. The future of education means the 




CoL. Patiker in nrs Study, 



closest study and diagnosis of each personality and the 
application of means to develop that personality into 
the highest stature of manhood or womanhood. I 
believe that no teacher, no one, can study the science 



56 Educational Creeds. 

and art of education and remain in the same place, 
applying the same methods, more than one day at a 
time. I believe that what we need in this country 
to-day is a close, careful, unprejudiced, thorough study 
of education as a science. I believe that dogmatism 
should have an end and in its place should come scien- 
tific methods of study and a tentative mode of applica- 
tion. 

I began to keep school forty-two years ago. I began 
to learn how to teach some twenty-five years ago. 
jyioj-ai And, to-day, I feel deeply that I have not 
ends. yg^ learned the fundamental principles of 
education. I believe in universal salvation on earth 
through education. I believe that man is the demand, 
God the supply, and the teacher the mediator, and 
when the day comes that this mediation shall approach 
perfection the human race will enter into new life. I 
believe that no teaching is worthy the name if it does 
not have a moral and ethical end. There are only two 
things to study, man and nature ; there is only one 
thing to study, and that is the Creator of man and 
nature, God. The study of God's truth and the appli- 
cation of His truth are the highest glory of man. 
Herein lies the path and the goal of education. 

/^^ 

y 

Chicago Normal School. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of James L. Hughes, 

Inspector of Public Schools, Toronto, Ontario. 

I believe: 

That God is tlie Creator, the source of life, the es- 
sence of life which gives it the power of evolution to 
higher life, and the center of universal unity. 

That God and the child are the essential witS^God. 
elements in all true educational thought and 
investigation. 

That man's highest destiny is unity or inner connec- 
tion with God. 

That the perfect community of humanity is the only 
sure foundation for the complete unity of humanity 
with God. 

That the fullest development of the individual is the 
true basis for the perfect community or interrelation- 
ship of humanity. Race-inclusive individuals ^ , 
n .,..,, , . Develop- 

form an individual-respectinsr race. ment of indi- 

^ ° viduality. 

That the highest function of education is 

to aid in the complete development of individuality as 
the true basis for the community of humanity and the 
unity of humanity with God. 

That the selfhood of the child is the element of di- 
vinity in it. 

57 



58 



Educational Creeds. 



That uo one can be a true teacher nntil his reverence 
for the sacredness of individuality or selfhood is strong 
enough to prevent his interference with its perfect de- 
velopment. 

That self-activity — the activity of selfhood — is the 
Self- only possible process by which selfhood or 

activity, inclividuality can be developed. 

That activity in response to the direct suggestion cr 
command of another is in no sense true self-activity. 





-^^ 




M # 




:A 




^ -v®^ 




-% 


t 


■'k 


1 


M^^^H 


3 


SiB 



James L. Hughes. 



That every individual should be self-propulsive and 
self-directing; positive, not negatiA^e. 

That children who, during their school and college 
course, study and act only in response to suggestions or 



James L. Hughes. 59 

instructions from tlieir teachers, are being trained to 
be obedient followers merely, who may possibly act well 
under direction, but whose only positiveness of character 
results from their incidental training outside the school 
and college. 

That even responsive activity is infinitely better than 
recej^tive passivity on the part of the pupil; but the 
only true developing activity is that in which the child^s 
executive work results from its own originative and di- 
rective powers. 

That self-expression is the only ideal of expression 
worthy of recognition by educators. All lower ideals of 
expression, orally, or in writing, or by draw- ggjj_ 
ing, modeling, painting, or in any other way, expression. 
are destructive of power. Expression should be the 
highest agency for developing power instead of destroy- 
ing it. 

That the best test of efficiency of an educational 
method is the amount of true self-activity it requires of 
the child in the originative, directive, and executive de- 
partments of its power. 

That there are evolutionary stages, or culture epochs, 
ill the complete development of individual power and 
character. stages of 

That complete development in maturity is evolution, 
impossible unless there has been complete appropriate 
development in each of the preceding stages of evolution. 

That development is always arrested when work 
adapted to a higher evolutionary stage is forced pre- 
maturely on the attention of a child. 

That it is a grievous wrong to give a child more 
knowledge, or more power to acquire knowl- 
edge, without at the same time, and as far ]tijj^i^d|e. 
as possible by the same process, increasing its 
power and tendency to use knowledge. 



6o Educational Creeds. 

That the educational methods of the past have devel- 
oped the sensor at the expense of the motor system, 
Motor ^11^ that therefore men have become more 

training, receptive than executive. Educational 
methods should develop the motor system and establish 
the necessary reactions between the sensor and motor 
systems. 

That the power of problem-discovery is the funda- 
mental intellectual power. The schools dwarf pupils 

Problem by making them problem-solvers only. Be- 

discovery. ^^j.^ children go to school they are problem- 
discoverers as well as problem-solvers. 

That the natural wonder-power and the power of 
problem-discovery should increase throughout a man's 
whole life if their development were not arrested by 
unwise methods. 

That wonder-power and problem-discovery are the 
essential elements in alert and aggressive interest. 

That alert, aggressive, persistent, and self- 
and active interest is the true stimulus to pro- 
ductive intellectual effort. 

That the child's attention should be self-active. 
Teachers have no right to control attention. They may 
direct the attention of the child, if they are wise enough 
to direct it without dwarfing it. Interest and attention 
act spontaneously if the proper conditions of interest are 
provided. 

That it is always wrong to substitute the teacher's in- 
terests for the child's interests. The teacher's duty is 
to provide conditions of interest adapted to the evolu- 
tionary stage of the child. 

That one of the most important duties of educators 
is to form by experience in the child's mind in the earli- 
est stage of its development as wide a range as possible 
of apjDerceptive centers of feeling and thought, in order 



James L. Hughes. 6i 

that the feelings and thoughts communicated during 
the period of conscious development may Apperceptive 
have vitality and meaning. The outer can ^^^1^., 
never be made clear unless there is in the caption, 
inner at least a germ to which the outer may be related. 
That new knowledge becomes a part of our permanent 
mental equipment and an element in character only 
when the corresponding inner feeling and knowledge 
are aroused sufficiently to lead to a perfect union be- 
tween the old and new. The increase of knowledge 
should be by amalgamation, not by mere accumula- 
tion. 

That the activity of the selfhood of the child is the 
only certain way of making the mind actively and 
aggressively apperceptive; the only way by which in- 
terest can become persistently investigative and truly 
stimulative. 

That the child's center of interest is the correlating 
true guide in the correlation or concentra- centers, 
tion of studies. 

That nature is the most attractive, the most suggest- 
ive, the most enlightening, and the most productive 
correlating center for childhood. 

That the history of man's achievements, the revela- 
tion of the best ideals of civilization, and the co-ordina- 
tion of the uplifting forces of society are the central 
rivers to which all educational streams should be tribu- 
tary, above the primary school, including the work in 
colleges and universities. 

That the physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures 
should be trained as a unity, and that the weakest de- 
loartment of power should receive most careful culture. 
That informal training is more productive than for- 
mal training in all departments of human power. 

That children love productive work better than idle- 



62 Educational Lreeds. 

ness. They may not like the work we choose for them. 

It would indicate deterioration if they did. 

^^work.^^ They like more developing work than ours, 

if we have wisdom sufficient to place them 

in conditiojis of proper independent choice. The power 

to choose wisely, to decide correctly, and to control 

one's own powers in achieving good purposes is even 

more important than the power of accomplishment, 

which becomes merely mechanical if divorced from 

originality of conception. 

That it is not necessary to destroy a child's power in 
order to change its direction. Most of what 

iscip me. j^^^ ]3een called discipline in schools has 
crippled in order to control. 

That coercion is always destructive of real character- 
power. Freedom is less understood by teachers than 
any other element in child-training. A full compre- 
hension of the true meaning of the "perfect law of 
liberty " will make discipline a process for the complete 
evolution of the child's divinity, and not a mere effort 
to restrict its depravity. 

That while human tendency is not always towards 

The divine ^^^^ divine, human power is always divine. 

element. That if the child's power is used in cre- 
ative self-activity it will lift the child progressively 
towards the divine. 

That the scope of education should include the de- 
velopment of the brain and the co-ordination of the 

nervous system, as well as the storing: and 
Opportunities J y to 

for the culture of the mind. The proper nu- 
Origfination. . . ,. i i • i -T - ^ 

trition of the brain and neurological sys- 
tem, and their highest development through joyousness, 
plays, physical exercises, manual training, and other 
appropriate opportunities for the free exercise of 
originative, directive, and operative self-activity, are 



George P. Brown. 63 

among the most important departments of educational 
effort. 




Toronto, Ontario. 



ANNOTATIONS. 
By George P. Brown, 

Editor of Public School Journal, Bloomington, III. 

The educational creed of Superintendent Hughes, of 
Toronto, in The School Journal of October 3, 1896, is 
interesting to the thouglitful reader, and tends to lift 
his thoughts and purposes to a higher plane than the 
detailed work of the Bchoolroom is apt to suggest. 
The effect of it will be inspiring in the matter of both 
aim and method. A few of the articles of this creed 
that treat more of method than of doctrine will tend to 
convey a false impression to many readers of what the 
author probably means. 

He says, for instance : 

"The child's center of interest is the true guide in 
the correlation or concentration of studies." 

The statement is either very vague or very false. No 
jiormal child has any one center of interest. His edu- 
cative interests must be supplied by the teacher. If 
the child had already a center of interest that would 
lead him on to his proper education there would be 
little for the teacher to do. Civilization has deter- 
mined what the child must learn and what the results 
of his training must be. The school is to give him 



64 Educational Creeds. 

this knowledge and this training by awakening centers 
of interest that do not now exist. It is not true, then, 
that the child's center of interest on entering school is 
to guide in the correlation of his stndies, but that cen- 
ters of interest are to be established and so chosen that 
there will be a correlation in his knowledge and train- 
ing kindred to that Avhich exists in the social order for 
which he is educated. 

Another article reads as follows: 

"Nature is the most attractive, the most suggestive, 
the most enlightening, and the most productive corre- 
lating center for childhood.'' 

This is not vague, certainly, and as a statement of 
the author's educational faith is interesting, provided 
we all put the same meaning into the word nature. 
But do we ? Does the word nature here include man 
and all of man's activities in the world ? If it does, 
then everybody will accept this article. If it does not, 
then this statement of Mr. Hughes' is doubly interest- 
ing in that a man of his experience and observation can 
hold such an article of faith. 

Again, he says: 

"The physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures 
should be trained in unity, and the weakest department 
of power should receive most careful culture." 

Accepting this as a general statement ot the truth in 
respect to the three general departments named, the 
question arises whether the same law holds in respect 
to the subdepartments. If tlie child is weak in the 
"mathematical sense," for example, is he to devote 
more of his time and attention to mathematics than to 
other studies ? 

Another article of his creed is: 

"That informal training is more productive thaii for- 
mal training in all departtueiits of human power." 



George P. Brotvii. 65 

We will all accept this with the proviso that formal 
training sliall be considered an essential part of the 
child's education. Power is worth nothing that does 
not realize itself in forms. 

Another article of this creed is truly startling: 

'' Coercion is always destructive of character and 
power/^ 

It is probable that the author has a different defini- 
nition of coercion from the one commonly held. An- 
other name for coercion, when the word is applied to 
education, is authority and its enforcement. 

Most of the life of the child is directed by authority 
until it becomes habit. He must learn to do things 
because it is so ordered. It is the work of education 
to transfer the coercion from a force without to one 
within. The real self learns to obey the ideal self. He 
feels that he must. Character is strongest when obe- 
dience to this authority is most implicit. The road to 
obedience to the authority of one's self is through obe- 
dience to the authority of parent, and teacher, and 
society. There may be a time in the lives of some men 
when the real self never feels the coercive influence of 
the ideal self, for there may be some holy persons. 
The doctrine that coercion is " destructive of character 
and power'' would be a new education indeed. It 
would be nearer the truth to affirm that the Avaiit of 
coercion in education is "destructive of character and 
power." 

It is probable that the author of this creed believes 
the substance of what is here affirmed. We shall need 
to know in what special sense he uses the word " coer- 
cion" before we can understand this article. 

The last article of this confession of faith which we 
shall consider is as follows: 

" The fullest development of the individual is the true 



()(> Educational Creeds. 

basis for the perfect community or interrelationship of 
humanity/^ 

This statement appears to be misleading. It is true 
that without the fullest development of the individual 
there can be no perfect community; but it is also true 
that without the fullest development of community life 
there can be no perfect individual. The human being 
is both social and individual from earliest childhood. It 
is not clear in what sense we are to consider the perfect 
individual as the basis of the perfect community. Many 
will interpret this to mean that education is to concern 
itself chiefly, if not wholly, with the development of the 
individual as an individual, who is to be thus prepared 
for entering community life. This idea was held by a 
part of the Christian world at one time, but it is no 
longer current. 

Now, it is more than probable that this attempt to 
state an educational creed illustrates tlie impossibility 
for one to convey his thought in so few words with such 
precision that all, or any one, will understand it as the 
author does. Our purpose at this time has been not to 
criticise Superintendent Hughes' creed but to call the 
attention of the reader to an interpretation that would 
easily be given to these articles, which interpretation 
would constitute very bad educational doctrine, unless 
some people have discovered some new and fundamental 
truths that will work a revolution in the world's con- 
ception of the aim and method of educating the young, 
and in civilization itself. We all believe in evolution, 
but only a few now believe in revolution, and they are 
not our leaders. — From The Public School Journal^ 
Bloomington, 111., November, 1896. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of W. N. Hailmann, 

Ex-Superintendent of Indian Education, at present superintendent 
of the schools of Dayton, O. 

I:t^ matters of education, I am afraid of creeds. 
Creeds are apt to array men in hostile groups, each 
bent on the maintenance of its creed instead 
of toiling jointly with others in the search of 

for more light and better ways. Creeds are 
apt to hinder rather than to help progress, which is the 
very essence and purpose of education. As authorita- 
tive statements of doctrine, creeds are of little value in 
any art, and educational practice, as an art, loses in 
effectiveness in the measure in which it is subjected to 
fixed doctrine. As embodiments of more or less con- 
nected statements of opinion on matters of educational 
theory and practice, creeds are, if possible, even more 
hurtful. They are apt to be either too vague to afford 
real guidance in practical work or so specific as to force 
the practical work into channels of routine, which is 
always hostile to development. 

Yet, earnest and thoughtful workers in the educa- 
tional field will of necessity reach certain more or less 

general views concerning the various phases . 

o 1 T J. • i. Criteria 

of their work, certain more or less distinct of, 

. , i 1 . ^ Practice, 

points of theory which may, at least tempo- 
rarily, assume the force of convictions and of more or 
less serviceable criteria of practice. In this sense, I 

67 



6S 



Educational Creeds. 

reads somewhat as 



have an educational creed which 

follows: 

In the first place, as to child and man, I see in man 

the only living being capable of conscious individual, 
social, racial, and universal development — 
the only living being that can gain an insight 

into the purpose and tendency of the evolutionary pro- 




W. N. Hailmann. 

cess and deliberately make of himself the chief factor 
in this process. 

I see the child and man, primarily, in his develop- 
ment under the physical law of growth, finding impulse 
and guidance in instinct and heredity, his life-activities 
absorbent and aiming at self -establishment and self- 



W. N. Hailmann. 69 

preservation. I see him, in another ])hase of develoi^- 
ment, nnder the psychical law of conscious Physical, 
self-direction, finding impulse and guidance ^^^^^l""^^' 
in experience, in social union and history, etwcaiiaw. 
his life-activities productive and leading to the arts of 
commerce and of the industries, aiming at self-expansion. 
I see him, in the last and highest phase of his develop- 
ment, placing himself freely and joyously under the 
moral law of love, finding impulse and guidance in in- 
spiration and insight, his life-activities becoming truly 
creative, his soul finding expression in art and in deeds 
of charity and devotion. 

The ultimate aim of education I find in the liberation 
of the child and of man from the blind forces of instinct 
and heredity, giving him conscious control of The tdti- 
his powers and environment, placing him in ^^lateaim. 
possession of the achievements of humanity and of the 
ideals of humanity, and leading him to an adequate 
appreciation of his responsibility with reference to the 
progressive achievement of these ideals. 

The proximate aim of education, I take it, is to make 
the child, within himself, strong atid self-reliant; in his 

experience, sensible and thoroug-h; in his o^u 

1 1 « T T ° Tne prox- 

work, cheerful and earnest; in his attitude imate aim. 

towards others, sympathetic and helpful; iu short, to 

lead him to individual, social, and universal efficiency. 

As to the mutual attitude of teacher and pupil, I see 
the teacher successively as guardian, guide, exemplar, 
leader, friend, companion; and the child 
respectively implicitly obedient, intelligently ^pupulif 
following, reverently and affectionately imitat- ^^^^^^^• 
ing, loyally co-operating, sympathetically appreciative, in 
devoted co-ordination with reference to the common end. 

As to criteria of method, I hold that every full educa- 
tional measure should stimulate into self-active life the 



70 Educational Creeds. 

entire being of the child in harmony with benevolent 
purpose. Whatever stimulus comes to the 
^itimuiL^ child should enlist spontaneous interest, 
invite spontaneous thought, call forth spon- 
taneous purpose, and lead to spontaneous achievement. 
The mental act, in its entirety, begins with interest and 
ends in achievement; the key-note of its harmony is its 
purpose; and this should be benevolent, should tend 
from individual to social, from social to universal, ends. 
This is equivalent to the demand that instruction 
should rest upon the child's personal experience and 
should lead, through thought, to correspond- 
^^?nd^ °^ ing achievement or action. In this, it will 
cep ion, ^^ noticed, thought has a double part to play= 
On the side of experience, thought is apperceptive and 
results in knowledge, or apperceptive ideas; on the side 
of achievement, thought is introceptive and results in 
purpose, or introceptive ideas. 

It is equivalent, also, to the demand that instruction 
should, like spontaneous mental life, proceed from anal- 
ysis to synthesis. The beginning of anal- 
anaiysis to ysis is in experience, and .synthesis finds its 
syn esis. ^^^^^ legitimate end in achievement. Both 
analysis and synthesis take place in thought, furnishing 
guidance and substance to the will. The will itself 
is the center of life; it appears as active resistance in 
experience, as active assimilation in thought, as active 
control in achievement. 

I see that with expanding thought the vital force of 
one isolated individual becomes inadequate for the pur- 
poses of complete life, that social union in 
of purpose and action, as well as sympathy in 
experience and thought, become indispen- 
sable. This leads in life to a significant division of 
interests. Deliberate experience, through experiment. 



IV. N. Hailmann. )i 

becomes the task of one; the formuhition of law and 
the construction of theory, the task of another; inven- 
tian and leadership in purpose, the task of a third; final 
achievement of purpose, the task of a fourth, who may 
have, and usually has, many associates. Yet all are 
consciously united in the same complete mental act. 

The chief defect of the schools of our time is to be 
found in the disregard of these social requirements in 
the work of instruction, and in the conse- social 
quent neglect of tlie child's social attitude, demands. 
The work of the school should be carried on with constant 
reference to these social requirements, systematically 
stimulating the child to interest himself in common 
2)urpose, to find his place with reference to its achieve- 
ment, and to devote himself to its achievement under 
the undivided guidance of spontaneous good will. 

In thought-development on the side of knowledge, 
method should begin with perception, which deals with 
things and phenomena ; it should subse- 
quently appeal to reason, which is concerned 
with ideas and relations, and furnish insight, which re- 
fers to ideals and their realizations. 

In the liberation of the will, method should begin with 
the stimulation of the will in interest; should carefully 
guard attention, in which the will becomes 
conscious of its object, {ind establish aspira- 
tion, which is indeed the liberated will, controlling life 
in the service of elevated ideals. 

With reference to the achievement side of develop- 
ment, educational method should begin with play and 
lead the cliild gradually to productive and Achieve- 
creative work. This implies a gradual transi- ™®^** 
tion in the chief stimulus of the activity from a sense 
of mere pleasure to a sense of duty, and to the joy that 
attends its faitliful performance. 



72 Educational Creeds. 

lu his efforts to provide stimnlation, material, and 

scope for the self-active development of the child the 

means at the disposal of the educator are 

ment and environment and instruction. Environment 
consists of things and relations, of events and 
phenonema; it appeals primarily and predominantly to 
analytic and inductive processes; it yields experience 
and personal knowledge, establishes apperceptive centers 
for the purposes of instruction. Instruction appeals 
primarily and predominantly to synthetic and deductive 
processes; it transmits, on the basis of the pupil's per- 
sonal experience, the experience of the race; it imparts 
the conventionalities of institutional life; it guards and 
directs purpose, and furnishes encouragement and assist- 
ance in achievement. 

Deliberate education should adjust environment with 

reference to the child's scope and power, and with a 

view of securing for him complete life on his 

^i^nl? ^^^^^ plane of appreciation and achievement. 
It should eliminate excessive, and thereby 
weakening, hindrances and temptations, without, how- 
ever, excluding legitimate hardships that stimulate per- 
sistence and ample opportunities to choose the relatively 
true and right. In the stimulation and direction of 
effort, in the resistance of temptation and overcoming of 
difficulties, and in the recognition of the relatively true 
and right, instruction is invaluable and indispensable. 

Artificial incentives that lie outside the legitimate 

purposes of the mental acts involved, and punishments 

that appeal to relatively low motives and 

incent^S. thereby retard and arrest development, are 

symptoms of ignorance, weaknesses of temper, 

or lack of benevolence on the part of the educator. 

W. N. Hailmann. 

Washington. D.C. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of L. Seeley, Ph.D., 

Professor of Pedagoj^y, State Normal School, Trentou, N. J. 

A CREED is a definite summary of what one believes. 
It is very difficult to briefly state exactly what one be- 
lieves on a great subject so as to be able to 
justify the positions taken when they are sub- ^cree^.^ 
jected to keen criticism or careful analysis. 
Then, too, one's creed changes in many particulars as 
one grows older, gets wider views of things, and becomes 
more thoughtful. This is true of religious as well as of 
pedagogic creeds. I certainly have very different peda- 
gogic creeds from those of my earlier years of teaching, 
and these changes have been wrought by experience and 
by deeper insight. I do not think that the end is reached 
yet, and therefore I do not necessarily stand committed 
to these beliefs for all time to come. I like the noble 
words of Col. Parker in the preface to his " Talks on 
Pedagogics '' where he says, " I sincerely trust that in 
publishing this book I shall not in any way compromise 
my attitude towards truth by clinging to any statement 
here made when it is shown to be incorrect, or when 
something better is presented." 

1. I believe that there is a science of education, not 
by any means final, nor ever to be final as long as there 
is such a thing as individual and racial devel- 
opment, with certain well-established princi- ©f 
pies, which must serve as a guide to the 
teacher. A knowledge of this science is as essential to 

73 



74 



Educational Creeds. 



the teacher as a knowledge of medicine is essential to 
the physician, a knowledge of jurisprudence to the law- 
yer, or a knowledge of theology to the minister of the 




Dr. L. Seeley. 

gospel. Therefore, no person should be allowed to teach 
without professional knowledge of teaching, any more 
than a person should be allowed to practice medicine, or 
law, or teach theology without the required professional 
training. I trust that the time is near at hand when 
the various States will require every teacher to be profes- 
sionally trained, giving due notice of such requirement, 
so that teachers will have time to prepare to meet it. 
This is the position taken by AVilhelm von Humboldt 
when at the head of educational affairs in Prussia (1808- 



L Seeley, Ph.D. 75 

1811). He said, "All teachers must be trained/' and 
Germany has long ago reached this condition. 

2. I believe that the child is the center of educational 
activity, that the school is made for the child and not 
the child made for the school, and therefore 

the recent psychological research based upon "^ center^ 
child-study is practical, suggestive, and 
bound to produce great results. It has already made 
some most important discoveries which are revolution- 
izing our courses of study, changing our schedules of 
daily work, introducing more sensible and humane dis- 
cipline, and producing better methods of instruction. 
The carrying out of this idea to its logical conclusion 
will make the scliool a most happy place for the child, 
a place where his powers are brought into fullest play, a 
place full of inspiration and love, a place that prepares 
him for honorable citizenship and awakens in him a 
longing for knowledge of his Creator. All of this the 
school should be and may be if we will remember that 
the school is for the child. 

3. I believe that the end of education is character. 
This has become something of a hackneyed phrase, but 
I believe that the essence of this thought is 

one of the most important that has yet been ^^end^' 
brought to the conscience of the teacher. 
Carried to its legitimate conclusion, it means that a 
higher purpose than that of drawing his salary, of ad- 
vancing his pupils in the studies of the school curricu- 
lum, or of preparing them for examination or promotion, 
must possess the mind and heart of the teacher. All 
instruction, all discipline, all contact of the teacher with 
I] is pupils, will have not simply an immediate purpose to 
be fulfilled, but will look into the future of the child and 
prepare him for the right kind of manhood. 

It will create in the pupil the noble ideals wliich the 



76 Educational Creeds. 

teacher himself possesses and practices. It will look 
forward to the production of patriotic, law-abiding citi- 
zens, of useful members of society, and of men conse- 
crated to God and humanity. The evils of society will 
be guarded against, and the teacher will seek to correct 
them by preparing the men and women who are soon to 
shape the destiny of the land to fully meet the respon- 
sibility. 

This will make it necessary that boards of educa- 
tion secure educational experts for their schools, furnish 
them with ample materials and equipment, give them all 
moral and official support, and then, bidding them God- 
speed, leave them alone in working out their noble pur- 
pose. It will lead to greater permanency in teachers' 
positions, as school boards will learn that these high 
purposes can only be fulfilled when the teacher has be- 
come thoroughly acquainted with the child and his en- 
vironment. 

4. I believe that besides the intellectual and physical 

side of the child there is the moral and religious side 

also which must not be neglected, and this 

religious moral and religious life in the child can be 

raining:, f^^^y (jgyg]Qpg(j ^^ly bylessons from the Holy 
Scriptures. I believe with Rosenkranz that "Educa- 
tion must, therefore, first accustom the youth to the idea 
that in doing the good he unites himself with God as 
with the absolute Person, but that in doing evil he 
separates himself from Him. The consciousness that 
through his deed he comes into relation with God him- 
self, affirmatively or negatively, deepens the moral 
standpoint, with its formal obedience to the commands 
of virtue, to the standpoint of the heart that finds its 
all-sufficient principle in love.'' 

As, therefore, education is not complete without a 
development of the religious side of life, the State, v/hich 



L, Seeley, Ph.D. 77 

seeks to make comi^lete men, is not doing its whole duty 
in the public school. I admit that in 
working out this idea there are great dangers religious 
and difficulties. I also admit that the public instruction, 
school, supported by general tax, cannot be the arena for 
the discussion of religious dogmas or for the promulga- 
tion of sectariaii beliefs. Such an attempt would pro- 
voke strife, arouse suspicion, and defeat the purpose of 
the American common school. I believe, however, that 
such universally accepted truths as the existence of God, 
man's responsibility to Him, the duty of man to man, as 
well as the great moral lessons of the Bible, miglit well 
be taught. Instead of provoking antagonism, I think 
that parents would welcome such teaching, provided they 
could be assured that everything sectarian would be 
rigidly excluded. 

This does not furnish all the religious instruction 
necessary — perhaps it can be called only moral instruc- 
tion; but it is as far as the State ca7i go, and it will pre- 
pare the way for the more spiritual and doctrinal beliefs, 
which must be left to the home and the church. 

I might add many articles to ray pedagogic creed, but 
it seems to me that the whole ground is covered by these 
four statements, namely, a science of education 
which requires professionally trained teachers 
filled with the true knowledge and spirit of teaching; 
the child is the center oi pedagogic interest in the school, 
therefore a psychological study of the individual child is 
necessary; the end of education is character, which gives 
noblest aim to instruction; and the final purpose to be 
sought, which is also closely allied to the preceding 
statement, is to bring the child to a knowledge of God, 
his duty to Hi^n and to his fellow man. 

L. Seeley. 
State Normal School, Trenton, N. J. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 

of ElCHARD G. BOON^E, 

President of the State Normal College, Ypsilanti, Mich. 

In spite of the term's etymology, one's creed usually 
includes a good deal that cannot be expressed in formal 
theses. Between the belief that takes form 
educational in explicit judgments and the unquestioned 
though undefined faith that underlies there 
are no sharp lines of demarcation. The best that one be- 
lieves eludes statement. The final effort to put it into 
words may be stiil unsatisfactory. 

Any serious-minded person's religious creed reveals 
this discrepancy. It is true of political beliefs and per- 
sonal standards of conduct. Like all expression — even 
the best — of the deepest things of the heart, they are 
compromises. 

Nevertheless one should, having a reason for the faith 
that is in him, be able to make an approximate state- 
ment of the essentials of his ci-eed. And, touching 
education, I venture to do this. 

Education is a natural and inevitable process — a 
quality of the mind, incident to one's personality, and 
not something transferred or acquired. The 
instruments child is educated whatever be his environ- 
* ment. The process, which is one of matur- 
ing, cannot be prevented, though it may be hindered 
and distorted. Scholarship is an W7iessential element, 
though a very desirable incident and means of further- 
ing a wholesome education. Doing is a far more im- 
portant instrument of education than mere knowledge, 

78 



Richard G. Boone. 



19 



and quite as natural. But neither doing nor knowing is 
education; nor what is done or known. It is always 
helpful and contributes to sound thinking to regard 




R, G. Boone. 



education as this spiritual process of maturing, natural 
and inevitable, which may be directed or hindered, but 
cannot be prevented. 

As a second clause in this statement it is held that 
the world of thing and mind and force and happening 
is the instrument of one's education, and 
exists for that purpose. Set over against the educaSonai 
intelligence of the mind is the intelligible p^°^®^^- 
world. The happenings of nature are meaningful and 
therefore educative. Its reasonableness constitutes it 



So Educational Creeds. 

the instrument it is. Tracing out lines of significance, 
following up sequences, working out interpretations, 
grouping and relating phenomena and experiences — 
these are the steps in the educational process. Scrappy 
learning, disconnected ideas, are not educative or fruit- 
ful in development. The child is educated whatever 
the environment, provided only there be an environment 
that has meaning and unity and a purpose. To trace 
its laws and enjoy its service and use it towards high 
personal and social ends is the business of every one, 
child and man. The incidental maturing process is 
education. 

The subject of education, therefore, is the child, the 
means or instrument is thing or happening. There is 
no virtue in knowledge; but only in the effect of ac- 
quiring or holding knowledge. The indifference of 
means used in order that the end — an efficient maturity 
— be attained is therefore a corollary of this article of 
my creed. 

As a third part of this creed it is affirmed that there 
is in the child a natural love for knowledge: an impulse 
to unfold that is native and constant and is manifest in 
this craving. 

Between the universe of things and phenomena to be 

known and enjoyed and used and the mind which is 

Fitness for ^^^^^1 ^^ know and enjoy and use there is a 

education, j.gj^] j^|^(j abiding affinity — an adaptation of 
each for the other. To the unspoiled child knowledge 
is attractive because it is knowledge. Primarily it is 
an impersonal and unselfish affinity. Things invite 
him. A world of happenings exists for him, and be- 
longs to him, and finds in his pleasure and service its 
only reason for being; whatever is, is his opportunity. 

To save this spontaneous and unshamed and many- 
sided interest in things and persons and affairs and 



Richard G. Boone. 81 

make it active in adult years is the great purpose of teach- 
ing. This interest in knowing is better 

^ ^ Conditions 

than knowledge as an abidiug purpose and an and means of 

° o J. J. maturing, 

intelligent efort to do right chastens a life 
of mistakes. Better a joyous unreserved pleasure in the 
beautiful than the most critical estimate of any in- 
dividual work of art. Openness of mind and touch- 
ableness of heart, effort, experiment— these are at once 
the condition and the means of maturing. If these be 
wanting, the ripest culture stagnates. In the unspoiled 
child they are not wanting— even in the average child— 
but are ofteu, if not usually, pronounced and insistent 
and regenerative. That it is so is the saving fact for 
the teacher. This internal urgency of the child is the 
one reasonable and ever-present motive to which appeal 
may be made. All other motives, or so-called motives, 
are artificial, and on the surface, and of transient force. 
The opportunity of every teacher is to find this open 
door to a child's loves and interests. 

As it is held, therefore, tliat the child as a rational 
being is the only subject of education, and that the pro- 
cess is a natural one, that the world, reason- 

Summary, 
able and meaningful, is the only instrument 

of education, and that the natural affinity between these 
two, the love of the child for knowledge and the corre- 
sponding fitness of the world to be known, constitute 
the only motive in education, so it is held as a fourth 
article in this creed that time and the opportunities that 
go along with it are the only conditions in education. 
Given a reasonable creature in a meaningful world, and 
time will educate him, so natural and inevitable is the 
process. The function of teaching is to direct this 
process to wise and wholesome ends, and with a thrifty 
use of means. R. G. Booke. 

Ypsilanti, Mich. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of E. W. Scripture, 

Director of the Psychological Laboratory, Yale University. 

I BELIEVE that one of the prime duties of education 
Self- ^^ ^^ train the child to obedience and self- 
control, control. It would be hard to say too much 
:n favor of military drill for this purpose. 

That the child should voluntarily attend to and cheer- 
causesof ^"^^7 follo^' the instruction. If marks, re- 
disobedience. y^r.ii.(]g^ or penalties are necessary, the trouble 
may lie in: 

1. The child (mental or bodily troubles, which should 
be attended to or at least understood). 

2. The system of instruction (long lessons, no inter- 
mission, dull subjects, vicious regulations as to posture, 
speaking, etc.). 

3. The teacher (dull or irritating manner, uninterest- 
ing method of conducting the lesson). 

4. Bad air and bad light. 

That the child's attention should not be strained to 

the breaking point. Few grown persons can listen to a 

sermon or a lecture for half an hour without 

point of fatigue. The Emperor William has ordered 

that the sermons j^reached before him shall 

not exceed fifteen minutes. In many American schools 

the sermon lasts five or six hours a day, with only one 

stop for refreshment. It is a well-established fact that 

no school exercise shall last over 45 minutes as an 

82 



E. IV. Scripture. 



83 



extreme, and that after each such exercise there should 
be an intermission of 10 to 20 minutes. In many schools 
there is not a single recess during the whole morning 
session of three hours. 




E. W. SCEIPTTJEE. 

That children should be at least allowed (if not 
taught) to love the beautiful. When they are making 
borders and other designs with their colored 
papers, why should they be punished for ^The°^ 
using bright colors ? Is it really necessary ^^*^t""^- 
that all designs shall be of muddy colors in dingy corn- 



84 Edmational Creeds. 

binations ? It is true that our household decorations 
consist mainly in dingy colors enlivened only by hideous 
contrasts. This is the natural result of deriving our 
ideas from a nation that lives in a continual atmospheric 
and intellectual fog. But America has sunshine enough 
to make things pleasanter. Do let the children have 
some sunshine in their colors, and don^t tell them that 
slate-pencil and chalk are prettier than cherries and 
plums. 

That children should not be taught to love the ugly. 
In many places their sense of beauty is systematically 

deformed; they are made into aesthetical 
de^rmiUes. l^umpbacks. This is done partly by the color 

work. A few years ago sets of colored tablets 
were placed before the children in two cities. Each 
child was to pick out the tablet that pleased him best. 
In the lowest grades they picked out almost entirely the 
yellow, green, and blue, and avoided red and violet; in 
the upper grades there was a progressive tendency to 
picking out the colors more evenly; in the highest 
grades they chose more red. This did not prove that 
children naturally dislike red and violet and that as they 
grow older they learn to love them. The children had 
not been tested with flowers or pure colors, but with 
X Y Z's specially prepared tablets. No wonder that the 
children did not like the red and violet tablets; the red 
was hideous, and the violet resembled a decaying egg- 
plant. I leave the reader to think out what the experi- 
ment really proved. 

That we ought not to allow manufacturers and trades- 
men to prescribe our methods of instruction. If we 

wanted directions for instruction in chemis- 
fo?sai^! try we would not go to a dealer in chemical 

glassware for it — especially if he declared 
tliat all the great chemists that ever lived were wrong 



E. IV. Scripture. ^5 

and that he alone understood the science. There is to- 
day in many American schools a department of instruc- 
tion in exactly this condition; it is Well, let's have 

no personalities. 

That the hig should precede the little. For example, 
in educating a child's activities the large movements 
should come first. The general order of order of 
studies should be : Physical exercises, mainly studies, 
out-of-doors; manual training, writing and drawing, 
finer work. Thus the kindergarten should be a real 
outdoor or indoor garden devoted mainly to games, and 
not to small work like beads and pegs. Every fact and 
truth now taught by such abominations as sewing, the 
pegboard, etc., could be far better taught by large games, 
if the teacher only knew how. Just after the kinder- 
garten the chief instruction (in addition to language) 
should be in woodwork. In order that the reader may 
not think I am building an air-castle, I hasten to add 
that a carefully developed system of woodwork for 
children from five to nine years of age is already in use 
in Sweden. From this point manual training (including 
laboratory work) should always form some part of the 
instruction. At the appropriate time writing and draw- 
ing can be introduced. 

That we ought to make our instruction as truthful as 
we conveniently can. The kindergarten teaching that 
the child is the sole object for which nature 
blooms and man toils is a medieval lie. The ^trutSui.^ 
sun does not rise for the purpose of waking 
Freddy in the morning, the birds do not sing just 
because he comes out, etc., etc. If Freddy has a 
healthy American spirit in him he soon tires of such 
twaddle. 

That " teaching lies " to children is an unspeakable 



S6 Educational Creeds. 

crime. The ordinary "temperance" instrnction is a 
Teaching good example of an nnmitigated lie. The 
lies. usual instrnction in history is somewhat 
better. 

That children should generally have some idea of 
what they are talking about. A favorite song in the 
kindergarten is ^'The Farmer." How many 
^'^'wordi!'"^ children in a New York or Chicago kinder- 
garten ever learn what a farmer is ? Un- 
sophisticated persons would say the teacher should try 
to explain by pictures, stories, etc. A prominent kinder- 
gartner, however, says that the farmer is to symbolize 
an invisible care that provides the child's food, and that 
it makes no difference how the child embodies the idea. 
But where do father and mother come in, and sup- 
pose the child has gotten his idea of the farmer from 
the comic paper ? It's hardly fair to the farmer, any- 
way. 

That instruction in metaphysics is out of place in the 
kindergarten. Some one once said that England was 

the place where the e^ood old German phi- 
Symbolism. i to i 

losophies went when they were dead. Hegelian 

philosophy had just gone there. This was many years 
ago. Now Hegelian philosophy has found its home in 
the American kindergarten. Everything symbolizes 
something. The sphere symbolizes the universe, the 
sun, the earth, the moon. (Why not the orange, the 
grape, and the soap-bubble?) The cylinder symbolizes 
— you can finish the list by referring to various kinder- 
garten books. Nothing is what it is, and everything is 
what it isn't. You nuiy not understand it; but then 
you must remember that Hegel himself said that " Only 
one man had ever understood his philosophy — and, 
after all, he hadn't really grasped it." 

That children should be educated to the good side of 



E. W. Scripture. 87 

life: they will leai-n the bad soon enough. It is the 
fashion, however, in many American com- 
munities to send epileptics, idiots, and other ^ooJ^s^idg. 
monstrosities to the public schools — presum- 
ably to toughen the sound children at as early an age as 
possible. 

That most criminal natures show themselves in child- 
hood and that there is some hope of curing them at 
that time. The duty of the ideal school 

defectives 

would be to watch for such defectives and 

then to either properly train them or send them to 

appropriate institutions. 

That the education acquired in ordinary Boarding- 
boarding-schools consists largely of vicious schools, 
habits. 

That an ideal system of boarding-school instruction 
for degenerates is to be found in the Elmira reforma- 
tory. 

That the child has an inalienable riglit to the pursuit 
of health and happiness. The child, however, cannot 
defend himself. By the law of compulsory 
school attendance and by the tyranny of his and 
parents he is forced daily to buy and sell ^pp"^^"- 
stock on the disease exchange. He traffics in diphtheria, 
measles, scarlet fever, and other valuable commodities, 
and generally acquires plenty of each. He frequently 
retires at an early date from the business of this life. 

That if a child is compelled to . go to school he has 
the right to a fair chance of living. In a certain kin- 
dergarten of sixty pupils there were at one 
time last year only fourteen in attendance; hyg^JJe. 
the rest had measles and diphtheria. We 
read lists of school graduates each year, but nobody adds 
the names of those who had early in the course gradu- 
ated to the graveyard. There is only one protection. 



S8 Educational Creeds. 

namely, the daily systematic inspection of the schools 
by specially appointed physicians supported by the 
authority of the State. In civilized countries like Ger- 
many and France this is everywhere carefully provided. 
In America there are only a few cities that attempt it. 
The rest of us must send our children to school with 
the certainty of dangerous and expensive diseases to be 
acquired, and with the probability of debility, deafness, 
or death. 

That a child^s mind should have a fair chance to 
work. It is not a fair chance to poison his brain with 
carbonic acid by shutting him for hours in a small room. 
One cubic foot of fresh air per second per person is the 
minimum allowance necessary for health. If there are 
thirty pupils in a room there must be at least thirty 
cubic feet of air entering every second, etc. 

That it is not advisable to employ methods of instruc- 
tion such as to ruin all the children's eyes; we ought to 
leave at least one good eye for each child. 

That it is not safe to remain in the old ruts any 
longer; the public may some time have something to 
say. 

That the whole blame, after all, lies with the public 
that allows the boards of education to be made up en- 
tirely of shoe dealers, lawyers, tea merchants 
reform wiu brewers, etc. It is a superhuman and im- 
possible task for a superintendent or a prin- 
cipal — no matter how gifted he may be — to educate the 
board of education, keep his place, and run the schools 
at the same time. 

That there is a good time coming : 

1. When the school system shall be not only nominally 
but really out of politics. 

2. When intelligent members of the board will assist 
and support the superintendent. 



E. IV. Scripture. 89 

3. When only trained teachers will be employed. 

4. When the normal schools will give thorough in- 
struction not only in physiology, but also in the science 
of mind. 

5. When education will be an art based on scientific 
principles and not a hodge-podge of antiquated philoso- 
phies, vague psychologies, innumerable fads, and endless 
nonsense. 



^ /^/^ Sor^-f^^^^ , 



Yale Univebsity, New Haven, Conn. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of Louis H. Jones, 

SuperiDtendent of Public Schools, Cleveland, O. 

I DO not know that my pedagogical creed differs 
much from the general belief of the average superintend- 
ent of schools. However, there are some tilings which 
I do firmly believe in reference to the philosophy of 
education; so here I pen them. 

I believe that the true 
basis for all methods of 
procedure in education is 
a comprehensive knowl- 
edge of man — as child, 
youth, and adult; as in- 
dividual and 

^Sf manf" '^s ^^ member 
of society; as 
a being with a history and 
a destiny. No abstract 
psychology, nor any mere 
child-study, will lay a 
basis sufficiently broad, 
though both of them are 
included in a proper 
knowledge of man. Even 
the knowledge of man as a person, without regard to 
social and rational characteristics, will not suffice; all 
phases of the human being must receive consideration. 

90 




L. H. Jones. 



Louis M. Jones. 9^ 

Having found man's natural characteristics, and hav- 
ing discovered his possible development, we are in con- 
dition to determine our ideals of character ^^^^^^^ 
and set up our ends of education. This con- 
cludes our first line of investigation and gives us our 
primary set of beliefs. 

I believe that the next most necessary theme for in- 
vestigation by the student of education is tlie nature of 

the various ideas which constitute the differ- ^^ 

Means. 
ent branches of learning, and which must 

constitute the means of development of the human be- 
ing who by appropriate activities learns them. The 
teacher needs to know, at least in a general way, the 
precise use which each branch of learning is best adapted 
to serve in the proper education of the young. 

Following the studies here indicated I believe it is 
profitable to study methods — i. e., the rationale of the 
steps by which the human being under Method of 
guidance appropriates and assimilates these learning, 
branches of learning so as to secure his best, completest, 
and most harmonious development. 

Jn a similar way it is necessary to study what lines of 

conduct must be taught — i. e., what discipline must be 

enforced, to the end of the highest develop- . 

TIT fi i 1 n Discipline, 

ment of character. I believe that along tiie 

lines here so imperfectly sketched a theory of education 

may be discovered which will stand the tests required 

of a science, and which will furnish the necessary rules 

for the guidance of teachers in the proper prosecution 

of their work. 

I believe that some people are born with so much tact 

and grace that they teach well by instinct, and that 

some of the best work done in primary q^^^ 

schools is done by such people. But I have teachers. 

noticed that such people, aft^r a little experience, unless 



92 Educational Creeds;. 

tliey set themselves seriously to work to learn the science 
of education, become formal and artificial and lifeless in 
their teaching. So that I firmly believe that the only 
safe way for all teachers is to continue to study while 
they teach, and to seek through all the days of their 
teaching life for the better ways of teaching. 

I believe that methods devised empirically and used 
formally are of little real worth; but that methods 

me^tSfds ^^'^"^^^'^ "^"^ ^y ^^^se observation, generous 
reading, and profound thinking, and applied 
under a high ideal and a deep feeling of responsibility, 
are full of life and worth. 

But I believe further that even a good method, in 
order to accomplish its best work in the schoolroom, 
reiaSis "'"'^ ^"^ wrought out by a man or a woman 
of high ideals of character and achievement 
The teacher must believe in a theory of education which 
ennobles those in whom it is realized. I believe that is 
the best education which teaches us how we— society- 
are all joined together as a whole, for better, for worse, 
for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health; that 
when one member suffereth the others suffer likewise by 
a humanitarian sympathy; that the criminal is one who 
finds himself in a state of maladjustment to the social 
whole, fighting the hopeless fight against ethically or- 
ganized society. 

I believe we should teach the child to spell correctly 

to read readily, to write legibly, and to calculate accu- 

Scopeof r^^^^ ^ believe in teaching the child the 

education, ^^gmty of labor through a well-arrano-ed 

course of manual training. But these Ire 

the mere beginnings of education; and by 'confining 

ourselves to these we are denying to our children their 

divine birthright-we are really denying them as yet 

the rights guaranteed them by the Declaration of Inde- 



Louis H. Jones. 93 

pendence — the right to life, which is not mere exist- 
ence; to liberty, which is not mere freedom from 
physical bondage; to the pursuit of happiness, which 
does not consist chiefly in the getting of money or the 
gratifying of the animal propensities. 

I believe in preparing the child by a very practical 
drill in the elements of an education to earn an honest 
living; but I believe also in teaching him to 
recognize what is honest and pure and sweet ^^^ll^^ 
and wholesome in life. I believe in teaching 
him that work is honorable — that drudgery may even 
be divine, if inspired and controlled by sound principle. 
Indeed, to live up to a high standard of life in a civiliza- 
tion still holding many of the crudities and evils of 
savage life requires that each of us shall daily do many 
things which in themselves are not only not pleasurable 
but are positively distasteful. 

I believe in giving the young ideals of life and char- 
acter and human worth and dignity, which will enable 
them to stand firm under all tribulations and ^^^^ 
drudge till the glorious end be achieved. In motives, 
and of itself much of our daily work is necessarily 
drudgery, while much of it requires that we bear large 
responsibilities, endure petty annoyances, and do dis- 
agreeable things. It is impossible that we shall feel 
any real interest in these things by reason of any grati- 
fication of any power of ours by any attribute of theirs. 
There is therefore no motive to do these things unless 
one can be found elsewhere, but so related to these acts 
as to constitute for the time being a valid vicarious in- 
terest. 

This is a true ideal of the joyful service we can do. 
The end not only justifies the means but glorifies it as 
well. The continued contemplation of the ideal condi- 



94 Educational Creeds. 

tions to be achieved by work for the service of loved 

ones gives a pleasure akin to realization, glid- 

of achieve- ing at last into the fflory of actual achieve- 
ment. "^ ^ TT • 1 . ,.<. 

ment. Happy is he m life who can so live 

and think and feel that the effulgent glory of his ideal 
life is thrown backward till it lights up all the pathway 
of his actual life. His ideal becomes the magnetic pole 
of his life and conduct. He will work and drudge ten 
hours per day, if need be, that he may found his ideal 
family life and keep it sweet and pure under the shadow 
of his own vine and fig tree. If properly educated, he 
will march with steady step to the cannon's mouth at 
the call of his patriotic ideal, counting life and limbs as 
mere incidents in the series of movements by which 
civil and religious liberty are established. He will 
counsel together with his neighbors, foregoing his per- 
sonal preferences, in order that the social whole may be 
unbroken. His interests are so set in the best things 
that he cannot unbend to the mean or the low; and the 
high sense of gratification coming from the realization 
within himself of a high grade of manhood compensates 
for laborious effort and frequent disappointments in ex- 
ternal plans and purposes. 

The end and aim of modern education requires that 

one become able to think clearly, to aspire nobly, to 

drudge cheerfully, to sympathize broadly, to 

decide righteously, and to perform ably; in 

short, to be a good citizen. 




SUPEllINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS. CLEVELAND, O. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CREED 
of R. Heber Holbrook, Ph.D., 

Principal High School, Pittsburg, Pa. 

1. The soul is a germ of , the divine in a process of 
conscious growth by means of its environ- 
ment towards the divine ideal. of 

2. Environment is a term indicating all 

the resisting (action) forces of nature upon which the 
energy of the soul must react (reaction) in order to 
reveal itself or to grow. 

3. Teacliing is a conscious effort to favor the growth 
of the soul by harmonizing it with its environment. 

4. Grow til is a term designating that plan or law 
of the divine in nature according to which all change 
makes towards improvement. 

5. Groiuth, as an idea, is essentially dual, necessarily 
involving opposites, as: progress and regress; less ma- 
ture, more mature ; higher, lower ; stronger, weaker; 
up and down; positive, negative; more and less; light 
and darkness, hot and cold, pleasure and pain, wisdom 
and ignorance, good and evil, righteousness and sin, 
life and death. 

To think growth is to think such opposites and to 
account for them, and to realize that neither is think- 
able without the other. 

6. God might have created all things loerfect, making 
change unthinkable, progress, learning, happiness, and 
salvation impossible, but He did not. Ad' in 

7. Free-willj self-responsibility, and the ^aw. 
partnership of man with God as a Creator are possible 

95 



96 



Educational Creeds. 



and thinkable only as under the law of growth estab- 
lished by God. 

8. All growth is of the divine, not of the human, 
since growth is but a plan or law by which the divine 




Re H. HOLBKOOK. 



force works. But the human soul attains to the divine 
image by learning good and evil, that is, by becoming 
conscious of the laws of growth in itself towards the 
divine ideal, and so of the fact that of this ideal it is 
itself the germ, the prophecy, the promise, the potency. 
9. Tlie Fattier is creating ttie sonl ttirougti groiuth, as 
He creates all things. The soul's consciousness of its 
own growth, attained through the knowledge of good 



R. Hebef Holhrook, Ph.D. 97 

and evil; of progress and regress; of ability, on its own 
part, to favor progress or regress ; of free choice ; of 
self-responsibility ; of creating itself through growth ; 
of thus sharing in the highest power of the divine, is 
the consciousness of the soul that it is made in the 
image of God. 

10. Teaching is, tlierefore, soul creating. It is the 
soul favoring the growth of soul — its own soul and the 
souls of others. 

11. Yea7's of discretion is a term indicating that time 
in the life of Adam and Eve, and of every Rgsponsi- 
other man and woman, at which they pass w-ity. 
from irresponsible, therefore innocent, animal existence 
to that full consciousness of self-responsibility which dis- 
tinguishes the human from the mere animal. 

12. This change in Adam and Eve is spoken of as 
the '^ fall of man " from irresponsible animalism to re- 
sponsible Godship. " Behold, the man is become as one 
of us to knoic good afid evil," was spoken by the Lord 
of Adam and Eve after they had eaten the forbidden 
fruit ; through this hnowledge of good and evil man 
stepped to his divine estate, realizing that favoring 
soul-growth (in himself and others) is good, and that 
impeding soul-growth is evil. 

13. The soul, being in the process of groicth, is grow- 
ing into an increasing and clearer knoivledge ^^^_ 

of its own growth, and therefore into the knowledge. 
knowledge of the hoiu to favor its growth. 

14. Conversion is the conscious recognition by the 
soul of the loving fatherhood and teachership of God 
(as manifested by the law of growth in all 
phenomena and demonstrated in Jesus witiitiie 
Christ), accompanied with a painful sense of 

past ignorance, blindness, and disloyalty (sin), followed 
by a joyous discovery, through the life and death (the 



98 Educational Creeds, 

blood) of Jesus Christ, that by turniug about aud work- 
ing with God in his plans, by harmonizing one's self, 
therefore, with llis laws as fast as they are learned, one 
may best grow into a higher realization of the divine 
ideal in his own soul. 

15. All teaching, therefore, leads to a deeper insight 
Deeper ^^^^^ ^^^ plans of God, and always makes 

insight, towards conversion first, then continuously 
towards increased knowledge. 

16. Knoivledge is, therefore, itself a groiuth, and is 
made possible only through the growth of the soul. 

17. Tlie aim of all teaching, of all knowledge, of all 
living, therefore, is the growth of the soul towards the 
divine ideal. The soul has, before all else, this one 
purpose — the growth of soul, its own soul and the souls 
of others. 

18. The feeling of duty is the souTs consciousness of 

this purpose. This is conscience, the feeling 
Conscience. « t t , • ^ i /. t ,. 7 , , i 

01 obligation, the leelmg or oughtuess, the 

feeling of being able to aid or impede growth and the 

necessity of choosing the right. 

19. Tlie primordial feeling of the mind is conscience. 

20. Tlie jji'iinordial knowing of the mind is the con- 
scious discrimination as to what is right and what is 
wrong. 

31. The primordial luilling is the choosing between 
the right and the wrong by doing it. 

22. Sensibility y intellect, and will, in their elemental 

The Divine P^^^se and successive development, are the 
Mind. (jjjjj miniatures of the Divine Mind as graph- 
ically delineated by Moses in the first chapter of 
Genesis. 

They are the radicle, the axis, and the plumule of 
the mind or soul. All teaching is favoring the develop- 
ment of these divine and divinely growing energies. 



R. Heher Holhrook, Ph.D. 99 

23. 21iese ele^nental ene7'gies are equal, co-ordinate, 
simultaneous, inseparable, one. To make one co-ordinate 
of these subordinate to the others, or to make energies, 
any one dominate the others, is to be partial and hurtful. 

24. Thei/ Are Transcendental. — They are not only 
the very unified elements of the soul and mind, but 
they are outside of and dominate the entire environ- 
ment of the mind. 

25. Tlie Three Pedagogical Axioms. — Out of this law 
of growth proceed the three principal prop- pedagogical 
erties of the mind, showing what the mind axioms. 

is as it is in the presence of the teacher for training: 
(rt) The mind is naturally self-active. 
(J) The mind naturally grows right. 
(c) The mind naturally enjoys growing right. 

26. The Three Pedagogical Postulates. — Out of this 
law of growth proceed the three primordial 
possibilities of the teacher with the mind, ^ostuiates^ 
showing what he may do with the mind, or 

the three lines of direction along which he may train 

the mind : 

{a) The mind may be fed. (Instruction.) 

{h) The mind may be stimulated. (Discipline.) 

{c) The mind may be directed. (Habit.) 

27. The Three Pedagogical Conditions. — Out of this 
law of growth cqme the three conditions which Pedagogical 
must exist before the mind can be trained: conditions. 

(«) The mind must be hungry. (Interest or force.) 
{b) The mind must be free. (Individuality or space.) 
{c) The mind must have time in which to grow. 

(Time.) 

Out of these twenty-seven articles come the whole 

science and art of education. 

R. Heber Holbrook. 
Pittsburg, Pa. 



THE EDUCATIONAL CREED 

of Patterson^ DuBois, 

Author of " Beckonings from Little Hands " and " The Point of 
Contact in Teaching." 

It is easier to know how to begin to formulate oiie^s 
educational creed than to know just where to stop. 

Creeds are supposed to deal with fundamen- 
^detaii.^^ tals or essentials. There are fundamental 

psychological and sociological facts, and 
there are doctrines or theories of motive and of method. 
In a short statement of one's convictions, such as a 
creed is supposed to be, these facts and princijoles must 
be presented in some kind of proportion. What the 
limits of detail in statement should be is a problem in 
itself. Probably in such a series of " creeds " as this 
each author has a certain liberty to be disproportionate, 
that he may accentuate certain facts, theories, or prin- 
ciples which may seem to him to have failed of due 
recognition, or which, for other reasons, have peculiar 
hold upon him. 

Education is that process by which an individual is 
led to acquire ideals, and to realize them through his 

own self-activity. In a Christian education 
etncSiion. these ideals are Godward or Christlike. It 

therefore aims to put the person in full pos- 
session of every natural power that makes for righteous- 
ness, and so to develop the whole nature, physical, in- 
tellectual, moral, and spiritual. 

100 



Patterson DuBois. loi 

This constitutes the upbuihiing of a character, or 
personality. 




Patterson DuBois 



Inasmuch as, whether we eat or whether we drink, 

we should do all to the glory of God, there is, strictly 

speaking, no proper division between secular 

A ,?'. ^ / ^. T • # +1 • Secular and 

and religious education, in view oi this, reiig:i9ns 

the Sunday-school ought to be in close touch 

with general educational movements, and it ought, so 

far as its educative purpose is concerned, to commend 

itself by reason of proper pedagogical methods to the 

sympathy and support of the professional educator 

as such. 

Formal education must take cognizance both of what 



I02 Educational Creeds. 

child nature is and of what the child as a social or con- 
ventionalized being must become. I have 
^?ie"race*^ little sympathy with the doctrine of parallel- 
ism between the development of the race 
and the development of the individual child. Yet the 
child does come into an inheritance of race possessions 
or accumulations through the educative processes. I 
am convinced that the child early feels his right to be 
recognized as one of his race. He is, it is true, a very 
different sort of creature in some ways from the adult, 
and is not to be regarded as undeveloped or diminutive 
man. Yet we do him injustice and injury by our con- 
tinually passing on him a class judgment, and so make 
him feel himself outside, as it were, of the pale of com- 
mon humanity. It is no sin or crime for him to be a 
child, childlike, but it is a sin for us to mention his 
childhood to him as though that wefe in itself his mis- 
fortune and something only to be tolerated. Whatever 
sense of unity with the race or social consciousness the 
child may come into, he must be a true child before he 
can become a true man. A too rapid development, that 
deprives a child of his childhood, means not enrich- 
ment, but impoverishment. A stunted, suppressed, or 
slighted childhood cannot grow into the highest type of 
developed manhood. 

The fundamental fact upon which I base my peda- 
gogical creed, so far as I am conscious of having any 
creed capable of formulation, is that all con- 
sciousness", sciousness is essentially motor; the idea of a 
movement is practically the beginning of 
that movemeiit. This being so, every conscious state 
into which we are, consciously or unconsciously, instru- 
mental in bringing another will sooner or later result 
in an activity, habit-forming or inhibitive, on the part 
of that other. Conversely, every activity deepens con- 



Patterson DuBois. 103 

sciousness, and insures, in greater or less degree, its 
permanency. 

AYhatever theories we may hold biologically, I believe 
that pedagogically we have little, if anything, to do 
with heredity, of which we are at best very 
ignorant. But we have everything to do and environ- 
with environment. It is the part of en- 
vironment to suggest ideals, and so utilize the potential 
of heredity, whatever it may chance to be. 

This environment does not develop the child, but he 

develops himself by his own response or reaction to it. 

The drug does not cure the disease by act- 

^ . x^ , ,1 . Reaction. 

mg upon the organism, but the organism 

cures itself by acting upon the drug. Food does not 
make flesh, but the living organism makes its own flesh 
by acting upon and appropriating the food. For the 
same reason, in supplying mental and moral food to the 
child we must consider the mental or spiritual organ- 
ism which is to react or respond to it. Hence we must 
always meet him on the plane of his own experience. 
We must start at his point of contact with life. We 
must address ourselves to some initial interest, ideal, 
instinct, or activity of his own as the primary factor in 
our general procedure from knowns to unknowns. 

Education is therefore not a matter of schools and 
homes alone, but of all life. The child is under a rain 
of forces or suggestions from without, to 
which he will, in one degree or another, re- the 
act. Our office as his educators is to super- ^ ^<^ator. 
vise these forces. Some must be directed, some de- 
flected, some, in effect, counteracted. We must put 
him in the way of being impinged upon by advanta- 
geous forces; we must defend him from the disadvan- 
tageous. But in neither process can we, or should we, 
be complete. Hence the child must grow into the con- 



I04 Educational Creeds, 

sciousness of the necessity of choosing, acting, and 
overcoming for himself. We have the difficult problem 
of keeping his part and ours in right proportion. He 
must not be swamped too early with responsibilities of 
judgment, choice, and independent action; nor must 
he have his work done for him, so that he grows up 
weak, irresponsive, and inert. He must learn to obey, 
but we must first be obedient to the divine law of child 
nature before we have a right to make a demand of obe- 
dience upon him. Obedience is just as imperative upon 
the man as upon the boy. 

The i^rime obstacle to our doing the best that might 

be done for the cliild's education is our adult egotism. 

The sliadow of ourselves obscures the child. 

e^t?sm. ^® press upon him our formularies, our the- 
ologies and philosophies, our inverted orders 
of thought, our remote reasons, our inarticulate allu- 
sions, our i]istitutional consciousness, and all that comes 
by experience and conventionality, and suppose that by 
talking these things in a jargon of mixed baby talk and 
technics we are meeting him on the plane of his experi- 
ence. We lead him into evil by suggesting to him 
forms of evil not level or likely to his experience, and 
from which he is in no immediate danger. We mis- 
name his motives and his actions, and read into them 
significances of which he is entirely unconscious. 
Many an activity in a child has a different basal signifi- 
cance from that which the same activity has in his 
adult accusers, from whom he has taken it by sugges- 
tion and in innocent faith that they were his natural 
exemplars. We complain of the child's excessive activ- 
ity instead of utilizing it, and think of him as a fellow 
being to be corrected rather than directed, to be 
thwarted rather than understood; and we think more 
of being ourselves obeyed than of having him obedient. 



Patterson DuBois. 105 

We are egotists always in the presence of children, and 
so do we impede their education instead of facilitat- 
ing it. 

Another obstacle is our satisfaction in interesting the 
child, or in gaining his attention. We do not stop to 

inquire what it is that he is attending to, or 

, . . . n . . -, . f 1 Interest 

wnat it is that he is interested m, and, above and 

all, what profound significance lies at the 

bottom of that close interest, that rapt attention. 

While it is true that much can be accomplished, 

doubtless, by the cultivation of brain-cells, it is also 

true that nothinsr but those experiences in ^. . . 

^ ^ Limitations, 

which space, time, and remote causes are es- 
sential factors can make certain classes of concepts pos- 
sible to the child mind. One thing is to be always 
remembered in dealing with the young child: that 
which is remote is out of his grasp. He deals with the 
immediate in space, time, caase, or interest. We must 
meet him with this limitation clearly in view, or we 
labor to no purpose. 

Our duty as educators, formal or informal, then, is, as 
I see it, comprehended in our office as ward- 
ers of the child's environment. And this fjjction^ 
office has the threefold function already de- 
scribed of direction, deflection, and counteraction. 

We direct when we address ourselves to the child 
consciously as instructors, bringing to him ideals 
through nature, literature, art, morals, or Direction, 
spiritual duties and aspirations. We deflect '^counter-' 
when, seeing the child subjected to all man- action, 
ner of unwise suggestion, unfair treatment, unnecessary 
hardship, cruelty, ill-timed conversation, literature, pic- 
tures, or terrifying and. brutalizing stories, we do what 
we can to draw off his attention or rescue him from the 
positive limbo or slavery of his custodians. We cou7i- 



io6 Edticational Creeds. 

teract when, having misjudged him, or having found 
him absorbing conversation which he should not hear 
(mayhap from good friends who sit at our table), we 
take every subsequent occasion to counteract the mis- 
chievous suggestion, which has already rooted itself in 
him as idea, and is consequently in the initial stages of 
formative self-activity. 

It is not only the parent or the school-teacher who 
ought to walk circumspectly in the presence of chil- 
dren. The obligation is on all. He whose 
adfusmen^ "walk and conversation " have come under 
the keen observation of a child is a part of 
that child's suggestive environment. Hence the im- 
mense task of the professional educator, who has to 
estimate the relative values of these varied environing 
influences in adjusting his curriculum. This adjust- 
ment will be efficient in proportion as it results in put- 
ting the child in possession of his own powers through 
the exercise of his self-activity. It will be truly suc- 
cessful just so far as it develops that real nature and 
those ideals which are God's thought of the child and 
God's desire for him. Patterson DuBois. 

The Sunday School Times, 
Philadelphia. 



A BIT OF A CKEED. 
By James P. Hai^^ey, M.D., 

Director of Manual Training, Public Schools, New York City. 

A PEDAGOGICAL creed should look not to the means 
but to the end of all education, to the development of the 
powers of the child, physical, mental, spir- 
itual. The means may vary, may change 
with changes in our knowledge of the manner in which 
the body and brain develop, may change with altered 
social conditions: the end is ever the same, to develop 
power — power to receive, to think, to execute, to origi- 
nate. Power is gotten with exercise, not from direc- 
tions. Knowledge alone is not power; to be potent, it 
must be knowledge in use. 

If there be power to create, opportunity should be 
given to exercise it, but no education can give creative 
power; training can but develop the ability creative 
which is already possessed by the child, can power. 
but afford it opportunity for expression. 

Power to execute at command or to imitate, these 
may be given, but such teaching falls far short of the 
end of education. The creative is far greater than the 
imitative power. All true art is creative — no mere imi- 
tation has a right to be called art. It needs the artist 
to make a die, a machine may stamp a copy. When one 
gives power to create one gives also power to enjoy. 
Thus may the laborer learn to delight in his labor, thus 
may the artisan know the satisfaction of the artist. 



io8 Educational Creeds. 

The power of creation depends upon the imagination. 
Stifle the imaginative power and you throttle the crea- 
tion at its birth. 

The growing demand for free development 
^"^power^^^ of the imaginative power is one of the most 
striking features of the broadening channel 
in which the great stream of education flows. One may 
note it in many curricula, in many grades, but nowhere 
is it more striking than in the modern teaching of the 
arts. 

Enjoyment of the powers of imagination is part of the 
birthright of the little child. Dwarf these powers in 
youth and they can never be developed later. Fortunate 
it is that there are few who voluntarily would seek to 
destroy in the expanding mind the power to picture. 
Some, however, accomplish through ignorance that 
which the few consummate by design. There was once 
a wise man who said that those who rose early were con- 
ceited all the forenoon and sleepy all the afternoon. 
The economic education which aims by mechanical 
methods to turn out a prodigy of formal learning robs 
the little child of the power which in later years would 
have lightened all its labor, leaves it dull and apathetic 
in the afternoon of youth. 

To those who are close to the child nothing is more 
delightful than to watch the growing power to receive, 
steady ^^ reflect, to execute, but this growth is never 
growth. ^Q ]3g looked for as one exhibiting sudden 
transformation. Those Avho seek such results will be 
often disappointed. One must stand afar to get the 
proper sense of perspective. None can see the change 
from day to day, and yet the change goes daily, hourly 
on. Not different is the change in the child basking in 
the genial warmth of a sympathetic teaching from that 
of the web spread upon the meadow upon which from 



James P. Haney, M.D. 109 

time to time the weaver sprinkles a gentle shower. To 
such a one said a passer, " A dreary labor that of yours, 
the same to-day as yesterday/' " Nay," said the other, 
" I pass and come again, and though I see no change 
from day to day, yet I know that in the end the change 
will show that all the while the linen is getting whiter 
and whiter, cleaner and purer." Without imaginative 
power what were poet, artist, author ? With it human- 
ity can know their joy, can follow beautiful conceptions 
in verse, in picture, in romance. 

To the child should be given opportunity for the ex- 
ercise of this power, that in his old age it may not de- 
part from him, and with it should be given 
the power to produce something that is good, -^n Irts* 
something that is beautiful, something that 
is original. So may the arts contribute to pleasure in 
the life of every man, and the delights of brush, verse, 
and melody be with each in his craft or trade. 

There is no article in my educational creed which I 
would place before the one which says, " I believe in 
the individuality of the little child." I be- 
lieve that we should give him the power to ^^^^^^' 
receive, reflect, direct, and execute; should 
give him opportunity to originate and create. 

I believe that all the manual arts afford such oppor- 
tunity, some to a greater, some to a less, degree. I be- 
lieve that no curriculum which excludes them can 
furnish to the child chance for full development. 

Education which neglects the cultivation of the self- 
activity of the child does him the severest in- ^^^^_ 
jury. I believe that all mechanical training activity, 
arrests the education of the child by his own efforts. 

I believe in the self-activity of the teacher, and that 
books and formula? which prescribe the task which 
should require the exhibition of originality on the part 



no Educational Creeds. 

of teacher and child hinder the development of both. I 
believe that the arts should be taught but as means to 
development; that they should be made a vital part of 
the existence of the child. 

I believe in beauty in the schoolroom and that the love 
of the beautiful is one of the strongest incentives to 
work; that the effort to seek it sets a stand- 
ard purer and better than can be any arti- 
ficial one. But I believe in teaching art not for art's sake, 
but the arts for the child's sake. I believe the art which 
seeks nicety of results in place of power of expression 
arrests the growth of the child at the beginning and 
makes it difficult if not impossible to continue its devel- 
ment to the higher forms of activity. 

In the teeming tenements there is one sound which 
rises ever shrill and clear above all other noises of the 
day and night— it is the sound of little chil- 
PP"^ * dren wailing. For those whose sentient ear 
is turned to hear the silent protests of the dumb there 
comes from every class-room, where sit children doomed, 
for no crime, to be deprived of that which is theirs by 
rights divine, the cry for liberty of action, the inarticu- 
late plea for opportunity to do as well as to learn. 

Not long since there was noised about in a London 

slum news of a school for the dull, a school in which it 

was said the slowest boy might enter and be 

^abon^ welcome. It was miles away, yet not so far but 

that the next day one cliildish tenant of the 

alley, a miserable paralytic, whose feeble brain held but 

one passionate longing, painfully dragged himself from 

his foul cellar to the quiet street where stood the Mecca 

of his hope. Then, knocking at the door with his 

crutch, he sank, stammering his plea, " For God's sake, 

let me in." This is quite true. I know his story well. For 

him a new day has dawned to end his Arctic night. No 



James P. Haney, M.D. 1 1 1 

longer impotent, he has lived to know the infinite joy of 
him who works from love of his labor. This is the in= 
centive, the sustenance, the solace, for all effort. This 
is the matchless, priceless secret of success for every age 
and art. James P. Haney. 

New York City. 



THE EDUCATIONAL CKEED 
of T. G. KooPER, 

H. M. Inspector of Schools, England ; author of "A Pot of Green 
Feathers : A Study of Apperception," etc. 

Is it not a striking fact that a touch of human nature 

in Homer, who wrote, perhaps, 3,000 years ago, should 

be as full of meaning to us who live so long 

on inui y ^^^^^ ^g ^ similar touch of human nature in 

umani y. ^^^ works of Lord Byron or Lord Tennyson ? 
This continuity in the character of the human race is a 
cheering fact to the educationist, because it follows as 
a consequence from it that there are numerous and 
weighty branches of education which are not really 
newer, more doubtful, or more perplexing to-day than 
they were in the days of Plato or St. Paul, or the 
medieval writers on the subject. 

Leaving out of sight the education of the future, I 
ask the reader's attention for a few moments while I 
dwell upon those parts of training which are 
as^S^eai. ^^^^ ^®^^ ^^^ ^^*® scarcely affected by modern 
changes, whether political, social, or scien- 
tific. I speak of Reverence as the ideal in education be- 
cause I wish to distinguish it from those very practical 
questions which, however much vexed and disputed, 
admit, nevertheless, of a definite solution. Whether, for 
instance, you are to teach a child Greek or French is 
doubtless a matter of controversy, but whichever way 
you finally decide it, there is no difficulty in acting 

^12 



T. G. Rooper. 



113 



upon the decision. Either language can be taught. 
When, however, you begin to deal with the elements of 
that high character which we desire every child to 
attain, the opposite holds true, for then there is a general 



1 ^J^ 






fpl 


•1^ 


1 


i / 


T. 


^ 


^WIR(H 


^2^jj| 


c 




!?j" r 





T. G. Hooper. 



agreement as to the virtues which we should try to im- 
plant or cherish. The only uncertainty is as to the 
success of our efforts. The mind, by the right use of 
the imagination, can create ideals at which to aim, but 
experience shows that man can only advance a little 
way in the direction of these ideals, for, strive as he 
may to attain them, the goal he makes for remains afar 
off. Indeed, so imperfect is human nature that the 



114 Educational Creeds. 

attainment of one ideal often seems inconsistent with 
the complete possession of another. 



REYEREN^CE. 

My central thonght is summed np in the word *' rev- 
erence,'^ In one of Goethe's masterpieces upon educa- 
tion he takes his reader to a secluded monas- 
JesSJres. ^^^T? situated in a romantic country, where a 
few children are being educated upon an 
unusual system. On ncaring the old monastic buildings, 
which, instead of being in the hands of the clergy, are 
now occupied by special teachers, the visitor is struck 
by the peculiar antics with which the children greet 
him as he approaches. He notices three different 
gestures. Sometimes the children stand, having their 
arms crossed on their breasts and looking up to heaven 
with gladness; sometimes they turn their eyes to earth, 
smiling, and keeping their hands crossed behind their 
backs, as if tied there; while in a third kind of greeting 
they run together, stand side by side, and look straight 
before them. 

Naturally, the visitor asks his guide to interpret to 

him the meaning of these strange gestures. " Children," 

answers the interpreter, "bring with them 

of into the world many gifts of nature. These 

it is our duty to cherish. Often, however, 

natural gifts develop best when left to themselves. One 

there is that no child brings with him into the world, 

one habit of mind which only comes by training, and 

yet it is the most important of all for the making of a 

perfect man." "And what, pray, is that?" asks the 

visitor. "Keverence," answers the interpreter. The 

visitor is still puzzled. 



T. G. Rooper. 115 

"Yes, reverence," continues the other; "all want 
that; you, yourself, perhaps. There are three kinds of 
reverence, which we teach here in succession, 
but which exert their full influence only "^^^ '^°'^°^'* 
when united in one character, and the three gestures 
which you have seen are outward symbols corresponding 
to these three kinds of reverence. To begin with, the 
young child crosses his arms on his breast and casts a 
joyous look heavenward. That action indicates rever- 
ence for what is above him. Thus, young children learn 
that God is above them and reveals Himself to them in 
their parents and others who are set in authority over 
them. Next, the children learn to cross their hands 
behind their backs, as if bound, and incline their face 
earthward. This action indicates reverence for earth, 
and reminds them of two things: first, that earth is the 
source of life and untold happiness; and, secondly, that 
it is also the source of infinite misery; for from the 
earth arise pain and sorrow, and earthly wills are un- 
ruly, and man is in danger of suffering and doing ill all 
his life long. In these two first stages of our training 
the children are taught to stand alone and apart; but 
in the third stage they join each other side by side, as 
comrades, and, thus united, look straight before them, 
facing the world with a bold front. Until man has 
learned to associate with other men for a common pur- 
pose there prevails between him and his fellows nothing 
but suspicion and mistrust." 

"But," says the visitor, "3^ou say reverence is not 
inborn, and needs to be implanted. Surely every savage 
fears the great and evident forces of nature, 
and learns through them, naturally, to fear ^^^^* 
a Being greater than himself." 

"True," replies the guide; "but fear is not rever- 
ence; the two things are distinct. What a man fears 



1 1 6 EcCucational Creeds. 

he either seeks to meet and vanquish, if he be strong, 
or to avoid and shirk, if he be weak; but what a man 
reverences he seeks to attain or imitate." 

This is Goethe's famous illustration of reverence, 
Now I hold that while much remains doubtful and dis- 

])utable in education, we have in this word 
reverence. I'^'vercnce, as thus interpreted, one thing 

fixed and certain, one thing which is not 
obscure or new, but repeated a hundred times in the 
world's literature, and proved in practice, as long as 
history records the doings of the huntan race, to be a 
solid and substantial basis for nobility of character. 
We must implant in children a feeling of reverence. 
The next point is, AVhat are children to learn to rever- 
ence ? Following Goethe, I would say: things above, 
things on earth, and man in society. I begin with the 
last — reverence for man in society — the most important 
element of which is man's reverence for his native 
country. 

PATRIOTISM. 

I know that the word patriotism is often distrusted 
and discredited. Like all high conceptions, the spirit 

of patriotism has been debased, and the na- 
patrfotism. tional strength to which it gives rise may 

be and has been abused to tyrannize over the 
weak or to insult the oppressed. But the true spirit of 
patriotism is not one of false pride and conceit, not of 
self-laudation and exaltation, but such an appreciation 
of his country's greatness as leads a man to be humble, 
modest, and ready to sacrifice himself as an insignificant 
portion for the good of the whole community. It leads 
a youth to feel how much others, living and dead, have 
done for him, and to aspire to make that return which 
lies in his power by keeping himself temperate and well 



T. G. Rooper. 117 

disciplined in mind and body, that ho may, when called 
upon, support the public interest, even if he must 
sacrifice his own. This spirit leads a man to live for 
the good of others, and not for himself or his family 
alone; it supplies a motive for developing his faculties, 
instead of destroying them either by vice or idleness, or 
even by a fruitless asceticism, like that of some Oriental 
fakir, sitting out his life in dreamiug and contempla- 
tion; it leads him to respect his fellow countrymen, 
whether rich or poor, and to remember that all of them, 
however divided in their several aims, must have a com- 
mon interest. 

This is the spirit that might replace the prevalent 
feeling of class hatred, that canker of national life. 
This is the spirit which we may implant in children, 
partly by making them acquainted with stirring pas- 
sages in English literature which are inspired by it, and 
partly by telling them stories of those men and women 
who have consecrated their lives to their country^s good 
and have believed that a profitless, comfortable life is 
scarcely better worth living than a life of vice. 

disctpli:n"e. 

Connected with patriotism is reverence for disciplined 
life, and therefore the next ideal in education is that 
of hardihood, strictness, and simplicity of 
living. Comparei the means of comfort i^iscipUned 
within reach of almost all people in these 
days with the opportunities for avoiding hardship which 
existed a hundred years ago and you will realize the 
imminent danger of yielding to the temptation of soft 
living, and then to softness of life. I am not think- 
ing of a frigid discipline, which is often a substitute for 
zeal, and which may throw some of the best impulses of 



ii^ Bducationai Creeds. 

a child into an atrophy, or at least freeze up the healthy 
flow of his animal spirits, but of that discipline which 
develops the manlier virtues. 

On this subject I will quote a passage from Taylor: 
" Otherwise," says he, " do fathers and mothers handle 

their children. These soften them with kisses 
discfpUne. ^^^ imperfect noises, with the pap and the 

breast-milk of soft endearments; they rescue 
them from their tutors, and snatch them from disci- 
pline; they desire to keep them fat and warm, and their 
feet dry, and their bellies full, and then the children 
govern and cry, and prove fools and troublesome, so 
long as the feminine republic does endure. But fa- 
thers, because they design to have their children wise 
and valiant, apt for counsel and for arms, send them to 
severe governments and tie them to study and hard 
labor, and afflictive contingencies. Softness for slaves 
and domestic pets, and useless persons, for such as can- 
not ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or servant, 
entertained for vainer offices. Labor," he continues, 
"obedience, and discipline, these are the three guides 
in attendance upon the highAvay of the cross; unpleas- 
ant are they, but safe." 

There never was a time when the numerous distrac- 
tions of town life were more insidious, and when, 

therefore, it was more necessary to dwell 
^Tf^iife.*"^ upon the virtues of singleness of aim and 

simplicity in life. No doubt a knowledge of 
miscellaneous affairs is most useful to most people, but 
at what a risk such knowledge is obtained in youth! 
Let us think of the biographies of men like Bunyan, or 
Wesley, and pay heed how much they were content to 
forego of that which most people devote all their lives 
to acquiring or enjoying, and that in order to obtain a 
large share of spiritual treasure, which many of us half 



T. G. Rooper, 119 

despise and most of us are very willing to dispense with. 
Thoi we may realize how important an ingredient in the 
noble nature is simplicity of life. 

CITIZENSHIP. 

It is not the important end of education to train 
a child to become a successful wage-earner^ because 
''making his own living'' is not really the 
most important part of his future life. The cmz^e^slipf 
real educational problem is not a mere in- 
dustrial question. We want to know how we can make 
it possible for all, even the poorest, to lead a life which, 
however humble, shall not want its share of dignity. 
The boy grows to be a man, and will become a work- 
man, or a professional man, but he will also be a mem- 
ber of a community and an American or an Englishman. 
Our problem is how to enable him to play a man's part 
in that community and in that country. I cannot bet- 
ter explain to you the meaning of this ideal than by 
quoting a portion of the oath which young men took in 
Athens when they arrived at man's estate. " I will do 
battle,'' they swore, "for our altars and our homes, 
whether aided or unaided. I will leave our country not 
less, bat greater and nobler, than she is intrusted to me. 
T will reverently obey the citizens who shall act as 
judges. I will obey the laws which have been ordained, 
and which in "time to come shall be ordained, by the 
national will." 

This is the spirit that pervaded civic life 2,000 years 
ago. How infinitely grander it is than the spirit which 
pervades a large part of modern society! It 
is a common fashion now to despise the past, ^ra^^jtlon^ 
to belittle great characters, and to magnify 
present opinion and practice by a comparison. There 
are many who believe that if they do not agree with the 



I20 Educational Creeds. 

expressed natioual will they are philosophic and scien- 
tific in disregarding, disobeying, and defying it. For 
admiration, reverence, and humility they substitute a 
spirit of cynicism, assumption, and self-conceit. Then 
I turn to a greater work than the pages of Greek his- 
tory — I mean the books of the Bible — and read those 
words of Elijah, when, worn out with the cares of what 
seemed a hopeless struggle with evil, he cried, "It is 
enough. Now, Lord, take away my life, /or I am not 
better than my fathers.'' How much nobler, truer, and 
more worthy is such a spirit than the state of mind of 
those for whom the past has no claim to respect, nor 
the ancient majesty of long tradition any title to regard, 
nor the law of the land any sacred sanction! Such a 
spirit is the highest result of reverence for man in 
society, and the way to implant it in the mind of a child 
is by encouraging reverence for the heroic character. 
We are cynically told that it is no reproach to a man 
that he is not a hero. At any rate, let children be 
assisted to admire heroism in all its forms, because some 
elements of the heroic character are necessary to every 
srood man. The contrast between a heroic death and a 
feeble, discontented, self-indulgent life cannot fail to 
be a bracing contemplation. Few children who have 
learned to admire devotion and self-sacrifice in the life 
of another will be content with mere ease and enjoy- 
ment in their own. 

ART. 

The next ideal I would bring under your notice is 

reverence for beauty, which is the chief of "things on 

earth." I think a good many of our people 

Love of \^^YQ areat doubt about the value of a love 
Deauty. » 

for beautiful objects. They look upon all 
sr.(*li as toys and trifles, playthings for people with 



T. G. Rooper. 121 

leisure and money to devote to them, as an interest of 
which the best that can be said is, that it is harmless; 
hence, they think that it is, to say the least of it, super- 
fluous to make children acquainted with vanities. Yet 
Goethe, one of the greatest and most thoughtful of 
writers, has said boldly, " The beautiful is greater than 
the good/^ How can we reconcile these conflicting 
opinions ? We know that the study of art may be made 
a frivolous pursuit, but this is a perversion of it: 

Ah ! believe me, there is more than so. 

That works such wonders in the minds of men ! 

A painting of " The Mother and Her Child," by Ea- 

phael; a landscape, by Turner, as seen in the midst of 

the eternal peace of sunset; a carved marble, 

by a Greek artist, who has fixed forever the truth, beauty, 
... » T , and goodness, 

transient grace 01 muscular movement, or, 

with intense vividness, the working of the mind show- 
ing itself in the fleeting expression of the countenance; 
an oratorio, by Handel; a solemn service, by Bach — 
these and similar works of art body forth for us in a 
way that nothing else can the union of what things are 
true, beautiful, and good. If this be the lesson that 
can be learned from art, it is no mere "crackling of 
thorns under a. pot,'' but a sober, serious pursuit that 
may, if rightly followed, brace and strengthen, as well 
as enlarge and elevate, the mind. But to get real good 
from this study it should be begun early in life and 
continued long, for a sense of beauty cannot be snatched 
up in a moment in our later years. This study, in 
Shakespeare's words. 

Is like the heaven's glorious sun, 
That will not be deep-searched by saucy looks. 

The process is long and slow, and if it begins with a 
child's delight in a pretty color it may end long afterward 



122 Educational Creeds. 

with a masculine and severe joy in beautiful scenes and 
objects, filling the soul with power. Of course, I do not 
expect too much from art, I do not hope to make chil- 
dren moral merely by teaching them to draw, nor do I 
suppose that the right remedy for rotten and rat-riddled 
tenements is a scarlet geranium or an artistic wall-paper, 
but I do believe that moral beauty is not different from 
but really one with the beauty which is made manifest 
by artists, and that if you teach a child to see beauty in 
a shell or a flower, in a picture or a carving, you are 
helping him to see the beauty of right conduct, and, 
wliat is more, the ugliness of the opposite. 

A recent number of the Pareiifs Review supj^lies 
me, from its invaluable appendix, which contains actual 

observations on the minds of children, Avith 
^f^beau^ty?^ two illustrations of the unexpected influence 

of a sense of beauty upon moral behavior. 
In tlie first case a mother describes the repugnance 
which grew up in a little child of four years to saying 
prayers, and explains the difficulty of treating this 
temper. ''One day,^^ she continues, "I took the little 
girl into a room where several tall lilies were arranged in 
pots and asked her would she like to kneel by them and 
thank God for making such beautiful things. She at 
once consented, and her interest being awakened, has 
continued ever since, adding a word of praise for the 
lovely lilies, and thus a good habit has driven out a bad 
one." Who can fail to see in this description a touch- 
ing illustration of one of the most exquisite passages in 
the Sermon on the Mount ? Another mother states, 
that to quiet a child three, four, or five years old, in a 
passion, she would take her to look at Holman Hunt^s 
" Light of the World,'' which had a calming effect that 
no words could produce. Often a first sign of regret 
w\as asking to be taken to see it. 



T. G. Rooper. 123 

The love of art litis often been thought inconsistent 

with hardihood, the last ideal which I dwelt on. If art 

is devoted to providing^ comforts and luxuries 

, . , ., . 1 . ^1 ^ Hardihood. 

lor private use, it may be so ; but the art 

which builds and adorns public buildings, raises monu- 
ments to great men and great deeds, or interprets and 
reveals to men beauty Avhich might escape them, will 
never lead to selfishness or self-indulgence. 

There is an ascetic devotion to art and an ascetic 
enjoyment of this world's delights, and it is this truth 
which Goethe adumbrates when he describes 
with quaint but telling imagery the gesture 
of those who look with joy upon the earth and yet at 
the same time stand with their hands tied behind their 
backs. The beauty of earth we ought to learn to reverence, 
but it cannot be enjoyed without restraint, so that 
parents and guardians must follow that Shepherd who 
said, "And I took unto me two staves; the one I called 
Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the 
flock '^(Zech. xi. 7). 

CHRISTIAI^ RELIGION". 

I have dealt with reverence of two kinds, as suggested 
by Goethe^s famous allegory: reverence for things on 
earth and reverence for man in society, christian 
There remains one more ideal, the greatest of ^^^• 
all — one that may change but never will decay; an ideal 
that is ancient yet ever modern, most well-known and 
yet never carried into act without being original; an 
ideal that is most worthy of being dwelt upon in a time 
when so many are inclined to disregard it, because, say 
they, " Old things are passed away; behold, all things are 
become new." The chief part of education is rever- 
ence for the Cliristian life. I mean by a Cliristian life 



124 Educational Creeds. 

an eternal act of death into life done by Christ, a life in 
which all may share, a life which has beeii shared by 
countless numbers of persons calling themselves Chris- 
tians during the last 1,800 years. The evidence and the 
substance of the death of Christ, and all the varied doc- 
trines that have prevailed in connection with it, are acts 
of Christian love. Tongues cease, prophets die, science 
changes, ecclesiastical systems flourish and decay — the 
act of love that seeketh not its own abideth. Amid 
fretfulness, discontent, sophistry, ambition, the roar of 
the street, and the din of the market we may easily 
forget or ignore this ancient and simple theology. Yet, 
which of us has not known in the flesh some living 
example of Christian life ? I do not mean a Gordon or 
a Nightingale, or an Arnold Toynbee, whose fame re- 
sounds as far as the English tongue is heard, but one 
whose narrow stage has been the sick-room or a dis- 
orderly and teasing household, and who has discharged 
lowly, painful, and laborious duties with such cheerful- 
ness and perfection as to make us envy the beauty of 
their spirit, which exhibits in power the crucified and 
risen life described with burning eloquence by St. Paul. 
It is when we come to know persons like this that we are 
forced to grasp the fact (which we are slow and loath to 
credit) that great men do mean what they say. 

Such, then, are the ideals that we ought to teach 
children to venerate — patriotism, civic life, beauty, and 

the Christian life. Great as is the impor- 
^^thSIs?^* tance of other subjects, ^' the rudiments of 

the world," yet if we bear these in mind dis- 
putes about the rest will dwindle into insignificance. 
Whether we succeed in instructing children exactly in 
the fashion of the latest and most approved science, yet, 
projecting this light from the past on the darkness of 
the future, we shall find it possible to train them to lead 



T. G. Rooper. 125 

a life which is simple, good, and true, and we shall find 
that while their human faculties are slowly unfolding 
and developing they are continually increasing the in- 
crease of God. 



Southampton, England. 



SOME ELEMENTS OF A COMMON EDUCA- 
TIONAL CREED. 

By George P. Brown, 

Editor of The Fublic School Journnl, Bloomington, 111. 

The School Joii7'7ial, of New York, has been doing a 
real service by publishing tlie individual educational 

creeds of certain men prominent as thinkers 
* and teachers in this country, in Canada, and 
in England. The writer believes that if a statement 
could be made of the philosophical as well as psycho- 
logical doctrines that underlie most of the thinking of 
the present time in every department of human activity, 
including that of education, it would help to clear our 
thinking about educational aims and processes. 

The writer is not so ambitious as to attempt to formu- 
late this doctrine, but the following propositions are 

submitted as a slight contribution to the 
^^nif?!^^ construction of such a statement. That the 

thought is centered upon the process of school 
education, in formulating these propositions, will not 
militate, it is hoped, against their application to every 
other department of life, since all institutions of society 
are but phases of the educational process by which hu- 
manity is advanced. The writer fears that some readers 
will fail to recognize their own philosophy of life in 
these propositions, but it may be that further reflection 
will lead them to discover that some things here set 
forth were already in their subconsciousness, and had 
become the basis of much of their thinking. 

126 



George P. Brown. 127 

There is a consensus of convictions among thought- 
ful men which constitutes the universal creed of these 
men, no matter in what words they may 
express it. They may be interested in "^^eld"*^ 
searching for these convictions in the fol- 
lowing statements of doctrine, and in discovering their 
application to the vocation of teaching: 

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS. 

The universe is an organism, ?'. e., tlie creative or 
constructive principle or energy is within it and not 
external to it. It is thus distinguished from 
a mechanism. The symbol of it is not a ^uSvefse^^ 
watch, but a flower. The process of change 
resulting in the growth of worlds and of men we call 
evolution, which is the modern name for creation. 
Man alone makes things. All other things are in a 
constant process of growth or decay. Growth, or synthe- 
sis, and degeneration, or analysis, are two aspects of the 
complex process of nature. The corresponding activi- 
ties in the consciousness of men are also called synthesis 
and analysis. Synthesis builds up, analysis dissolves or 
destroys. 

The actiyity or energy that is everywhere embodying 
itself in things, and changing from one form 
to another, is of the nature of will, since it is 
ever working towards some end, or ends. 

The only being on this planet in which this activity 
comes to consciousness of itself, to such a degree that it 
can become in a large measure self-directive, 
is man. The history of this planet shows conscioixs- 
that the end towards which this world energy "^^^' 
has ever moved has been its own embodiment in a self- 
consciouness being. The purpose of education in every 



128 Educational Creeds. 

age of man's existence has been to enlarge the range of 
this consciousness. 

The child is the heir of all the ages. " What they 
have thought he may think; what the saints 
have felt he may feel; what at any time has 
befallen any man he can understand." 

The direct purpose of education is to bring the child 
into this his inheritance by such a method and route 
that he may be able not only to " think, feel, 
%?°^^ and understand " what the race has experi- 
■ ® ^^^ *^* enced, but also that he may be able to add 
something of value to the accumulated store, if per- 
chance he has inherited a capability for such contri- 
bution. 

The child is a bundle of potentialities and tendencies 
Poten- which education seeks to stimulate or re- 
tiaiities. prggg^ as the ideal set up by our time may 
direct. 

The end sought is such a development of the poten- 
tialities and tendencies of the child as shall produce the 
best individual and the best citizen. These 
are not two ends, but one. The subjective, 
individual self is one with the objective, universal self 
which we call the citizen. The highest order of in- 
dividual manhood or womanhood is also t^he highest 
order of citizenship. 



SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS. 

■ The activities of the mind, while they are of the 
general nature of will, may be separated into 
activ?ti?s. three classes: 

(a) Acts that are non-voluntary and are 
either conscious or unconscious. 



George P. Brown. 129 

(5) Voluntary acts consciously directed towards an 
end. 

{c) Non-voluntary acts that were once voluntary but 
have become habitual or automatic. 

These develop or become actual in the order in which 
they are here enumerated. 

In the development of these classes of activities the 
movement is at first from physical or physiological to 
the mental or psychical. Later, the initial 
activity may be either psychical or physi- physical to 
ological. Every psychical act of any human ^^^^^ 
being is accompanied by a corresponding physiological 
act of the neural organism. Nerve action and mind 
action are different phases or aspects of that primal 
activity which is incarnated in nature and in man, 
making "the whole world kin." 

Education is the process of stimulating the har- 
monious development and adjustment of the psychical 
and neural activities that constitute a human seif- 
being, through the self -activity of that being, ^c^^^ty. 
The constant appeal is, therefore, to the will, which sets 
up ends and strives to realize them. 

Mind, or Primal Will, strives to realize itself in man 
in the forms of intellect, feeling, and volition, which are 
in essence one and the same, but are different manifesta- 
tions of its nature. Each of these forms demands for 
its full expression the harmonious development of the 
other two. 

The human mind has realized itself in the creation of 
the State, in which volition is the leading form of its 
activity; also in Art, in which feeling pre- 
ponderates; also in the Church, where feel- sell- 
ing and will are the leading forms; and again 
in Science, including all the departments of organized 
thought, in which the intellect transcends the other 



130 Educational Creeds. 

powers of the mind. These constitute the field where 
education must seek its material for promoting the 
harmonious development of the child. 

The order of the evolution of the individual mind 
from infancy to maturity is the same in all individuals. 

This makes it possible to construct a science 
' of pedagogy. The first class of forms that 
the mind creates which are conscious are perceptions, 
together w^ith the attendant feelings and volitions that 
unite v/ith them to make up the sense life. This stage 
has two phases: first, of interests that center in the in- 
dividual and are subjective and self-regarding; and 
second, of interests begotten by the social instinct, 
which are objective and altruistic in their nature. 

The second class of forms which the mind constructs 
are images, or internal perceptions, which are, at first, 

internal reproductions of sense-perceptions; 

and afterwards, modifications of these; and 
later, the creations of the imagination in response to the 
instinct for self-realization, which cannot rest satisfied 
with the objects of sense alone. Neither does this in- 
stinct for self-realization rest satisfied with these in- 
ternal creations, but it is prompted by its self-regarding 
and social instincts to give them objective form, and so 
create an external world that shall correspond to its 
internal images. The imagination seeks to objectify 
itself. To do this the feelings and volitions are prom- 
inently active, and each form of the mind's activity 
stimulates and re-enforces the others. 

The third and latest class of forms created by the 
child in the first two or three years of life are symhols. 

The babblings of the child are at first mere 

perceptions to him, but they soon come to be 
signs or symbols of other things, and are later system- 
atized into oral speech. The oral and afterwards the 



George p. Brown. 131 

written or printed words become the signs of all in- 
dividual and social activities, and of all natural objects, 
and the medium by which the self-regarding and social- 
istic instincts are communicated from one to another. 

After the first two years of the child's life it is con- 
tinually using perceptions, images, and symbols, in its 
instinctive efforts to realize its potentialities 
and tendencies as an individual and as a social aspect of 

life 

being. Individuality and sociality, the man 
and the citizen, the particular unit and the social whole, 
are not separate and antagonistic forms of being, but 
merely different aspects of one and the same life. 
Analogous to this relation is that of the members of the 
body to the body. Neither can say to the other, "I 
have no need of thee/' Indeed, neither can be anything 
without the other. Hand cannot be hand if there is no 
body. And hocly would be a meaningless abstraction 
without the members. 

This double aspect of life, the subjective and the ob- 
jective, the individual and the universal, must be 
regarded at every step in the education of the child. 



METHOD. 

In the field of method there is a variety of beliefs and 
practices, according as one or another of the ontological 
or psychological ideas is seen Avith greater 
clearness than the others and so given greater orgaSc'iife. 
emphasis. One gives special prominence to 
perceptions, another to images, another to symbols. 
Others emphasize the social aspect of life, Avhile some 
exalt the individual. Some lose sight of the organic 
character of nature and of man and see the universe as 
a vast machine moved by an energy not itself and ex- 



132 Educational Creeds. 

ternal to it. This fundamental belief posits a wiU out- 
side of this machine. All growth then becomes only a 
kind of mechanism. The principle of self-activity is 
not recognized, and all education is reduced to the 
operation of an external influence upon the mind to be 
educated. This class believes that knowledge can be 
'imparted," and that, too, by exact definition and rule. 
The reader can amuse himself by selecting other ideas 
found in this organism called mind and making each 
the center and controlling principle of a method of 
procedure. The method he thus constructs will prob- 
ably have its counterpart in some institution of learning. 
But out of this chaos of thought and practice there is 
slowly evolving the conception of a method in harmony 
with the method of organic life, the outline of which 
is now dimly visible in the conduct of some schools. 
— From The Public School Journal, Bloomington, 111., 
May, 1897. [Reprinted by permission.] 



PEDAGOGIC ACHIEVEMENTS OF PESTALOZZI. 

Dr. Karl Kosenkranz * in a memorial address deliv- 
ered at the Pestalozzi centennial, January 12, 184G, sums 
up the debt which modern pedagogy owes to Pestalozzi 
as follows: 

'' (1) In the method of instruction he has substituted 
for the artificial and playful modes of procedure the 
striving after the cheerful seriousness result- 
ing from and embodied in the form of de- 
velopment given by nature herself. 

" (2) He has emancipated the government of chil- 
dren from all terrorism. In place of compulsion and 
lifeless mechanism he has put the most lov- 
ing treatment of the pupil, in order to habitu- -"^^^^^^p^^"^* 
ate him to self-activity and self-esteem. 

" (3) He has opened our eyes to the fact that all cul- 
ture of individual intelligence and all moral elevation of 
the individual will are vain in the end // 
they do not issue forth from out of the whole educ^u^^ 
spirit of a lyeoi^le and do not flow hack into 
it as its original 'proiierty. He has taught us to regard 
education essentially as national education/' 

*Born at Magdeburg, April 23, 1805; died at Koenigsberg, 
1877. Occupied for forty-six years the chair of philosophy in the 
University of Koenigsberg. Best known to American students of 
pedagogy as author of " Tlie Philosophy of Education." (Inter- 
national Education Series, Vol. I.) 

133 



134 



Educational Creeds. 



Rosen k ran z repeats these three points in the follow- 




Pestalozzi. 

"Naturalness of the method in teaching and learning; 

love as the essential form of all human intercourse, 

hence also that of educators and pupils; the 

essentials, elaboration of education to a national system 

— these are tlie eternal ideas wliich moved 

the heart of Pestalozzi^ and which for us and all pos- 



Pestaloi^^i. 135 

terity, to be sore, are perfectible ad infinitum, but must 
never be given up/" 

"It is/' Rosenkranz says in another place, " a lasting 
achievement of Pestalozzi, through method, to remove all 
arbitrariness in teaching and learning. In 
order to gain a clear knowledge of anything, ^|^*^^encP 
the human mind must pass through a neces- 
sary sequence of processes. From sensation and sense- 
intuition it must rise through ideation to clear concepts. 
Instruction cannot give true insight if it does not con- 
sider this necessary sequence. In this psychological 
basis Pestalozzi fully agrees with the famous saying of 
Kant, that ^sense-intuitions without concepts are blind; 
concepts without sense-intuitions, empty.'" 

One more quotation from the remarkable address of 
Rosenkranz : 

" Pestalozzi recognized ]iot only the truth taught on 
every page of universal history, that man must be edu- 
cated; he recognized also that education, no 
matter how it may be modified, is governed ^law^^ 
by eternal laws, and he clung, therefore, with 
unshaken consciousness to the necessity of method." 




FKOEBEL'S PEDAGOGICAL CREED. 

By Verkon Gibberd. 

Education", according to Froebel, should be a harmo- 
nious development, from its earliest bud to its latest 
blossom, each stage preparing for its subse- 
^e^SfSm.^ quent one, and growing gradually into it. 
"It should," he says, "be the business of 
every form of instruction in its respective stage to arouse 
in the pupil a keen and definite feeling of the need of 
the next stage." In effect, he applies the great law of 
evolution to education, and it is no small testimony to 
the insight of Froebel that he should have anticipated 
to some extent this great principle, and have perceived 
its application to education, both as a method and as a 
process. 

The essential value and importance of early training 
were facts borne in upon him by the discovery that the 
schools of his day accomplished so little. 
chUdiood. Either the pupils came to school altogether 
unprepared, or with faculties quite neglected 
or misdirected from want of proper nurture; and failure, 
partial or complete, was the necessary result. " There 
are," he held, " in the child germs which, if they were 
to thrive, must be developed early," and hence the great 
importance attached to family life in Froebers system. 
The study of the psychology of cfiildhood, which is be- 
ginning to receive serious attention, will witness to the 

136 



Froehel. 



137 



supreme importance of the very earliest years of child- 
hood, as a period when tendencies may be developed or 
destroyed, and impressions received which color the 
whole subsequent life. 

But the great corner-stone of FroebeFs teaching is the 
law of education by self -activity ; it was, in fact, the in- 




Froebel 



spiration of his genius and the ruling idea of his system. 
"No truth is really our own," said Emerson," until we 
have discovered it for ourselves," and to train the child 
to acquire knowledge by its own activity was the aim 
which Froebel pursued with so much patience, and 
which his disciples have practiced with such marked 
success. ^' To have found one-fourth of the answer to a 
question," he says, " by his own effort is of more value and 



138 Educational; Creeds. 

importance to a child than it is to half hear and half 
understand in the words of another." To 

activity. Pestalozzi's assertion, that the faculties were 
developed by exercise, Froebel added that 
the function of education was to develop the faculties by 
arousing voluntary activity. Hence, he insists that the 
purpose of teaching and instruction is to bring ever 
more out of man rather than j^ut more and more into 
him; and it was this, as his conception of the method 
of nature, that convinced him in his study of childhood 
of the practical educational value of work and play, 
both of which were used by him as a means of invoking 
activity in the mind of the child, and leading it in the 
right direction. 

He found that one of the greatest faults of school ar- 
rangements as then organized was that too often, as not 
infrequently now, the pupils were wholly debarred from 
outwardly productive labor. And yet, as Rousseau has 
Productive- ^^^^ ' " ^ child may forget what he sees, and 
ness. more still what is said to him, but he never 
forgets what he has made; " or, as Froebel himself con- 
tended: '^Lessons through and by work, through and 
from life, are by far the most impressive and intelli- 
gible." A faculty for production is instinctive in chil- 
dren, and there is a danger that, unless this capacity is 
utilized and wisely directed, it may run to waste or 
suffer perversion; and it was because his experi- 
ence taught him that to learn a thing in life, and 
through doing, was more developing, and cultivating, 
and strengthening, than to learn it merely through the 
verbal communication of ideas, that he invented a series 
of " occupations," as at once a satisfaction of native in- 
stinct and a means of healthy activity and self-acquisi- 
tion. 

Similarly, it was his sympathetic study of childhood 



Froehel. 139 

that suggested, with surely the inspiration of genius, the 
educational value of play. Other philoso- 
phers, from Plato downwards, had referred 
to the indicative character of play, but the genius of 
Froebel consists in his discovery of its potency as an 
educational factor of the highest interest and import- 
ance, and his organization of it in such a way as to use 
it not only as a means of acquiring knowledge, but of 
contributing to one of the great purposes of education, 
the provocation of activity, and so leading by natural 
processes to the performance of work with the same 
freedom and spontaneity as play. " The plays of child- 
hood," he says, '^ are the germinal leaves of all later 
life."" It is easy to imagine possible developments of 
the use of work and play beyond the limits of ordinary 
elementary education. 

But Froebel insisted also on the necessity of con- 
certed action. He believed in developing early the so- 
cial impulse, gathering children together in 
groups, and so encouraging the growth of fction. 
those virtues which would not be otherwise 
developed. He combined the theory of Pestalozzi, that 
the child belonged to the family, with that of Fichte, 
that the state and society were its real owners, and as- 
serted that he belonged to all three. " The social im- 
pulse, the love of others beyond the narrow range of 
self and of one's own home, cannot be properly excited 
and developed except when numbers of children from 
different homes are gathered together." The value and 
sanity of this conclusion are evident from the success 
which has attended the kindergarten system, not only 
in this country, but especially in America. 

Xo review of Froebelian principles would be complete 
without a reference to his position that religion is the 
culmination of education.- He holds not onlv that re- 



I40 Educational Creeds, 

ligion is an essential element in all education, but also 
that from the earliest period the religious sense should 
be carefully and sedulously cultivated. Re- 
ligious teaching need not be doctrinal; it 
should not be dogmatic; but it should certainly be defi- 
nite and practical. Here also he would have the relig- 
ious sense evolved as a natural growth; not dependent 
on outward incentives or artificial sanctions for its culti- 
vation, but rather and mainly through the agency of 
love, and by the child^s realization of the reflex action 
of his own conduct. ^' All education not founded on re- 
ligion/' he says, "is unproductive." For to moral 
training belongs the direction of conduct, and conduct, 
as Matthew Arnold has reminded us, is occupied with 
the larger part of human life. — Condensed from an arti- 
cle in The Ediicational Times, London. 



DIESTERWEG'S PEDAGOGICAL CEEED. 

Knowledge does not involve the concept of education, 
neither does ability. All depends on the will. Willing 
dare not be lacking, the earnest, firm, stirring 
willing of that which is truly heautiful, true, 
and good; the unceasing striving for righteousness, mor- 
ality, and piety. He who has attained to firmness in 
this, is called educated. The means aiding to this end 
are called educative 7neans. The person who endeavors 
to attain this object in others, is honored with the beau- 
tiful name of educator. 

The school comes to the assistance of education in the 
family and prepares for life in the world; the church 
matures the bloom and adornment of politi- 
cal life and sanctifies it through the eternal ^o?iSe.°^ 
ideas of truth and piety. All co-operate to 
the end of bringing about as perfect as possible a condi- 
tion of human life. Hence life is the only unchange- 
able aim of every fruitful activity of educators and 
instructors in family, in school, in state, in church. Life 
is the one great circle which unites within itself all in- 
terests to whose developments all efforts must be bent; 
the highest task of all parents, teachers, statesmen, and 
clergymen. 

" Educate according to Nature/' This is the supreme 
principle of all human education, of all life-wisdom. 

Natural procedure is the highest degree of pedagogic 

141 



142 



Educational Creeds. 



wisdom iu matters of human education. Procedure 
contrary to nature is the highest degree of 
^^ccordmg: pedagogic folly and error. He alone is a true 
educator who in his educative activity re- 
mains always and everywhere true to that principle; and 
he misguides, warps, and distorts man who breaks away 




DiESTERWEG. 

from this principle and works in opposition to it. Hence 
the universal, unconditional, and most comprehensive 
demand upon the educator is: Follow nature! 

The principle of naturality contains two requirements, 
one negative and the other 2:)ositive. The formers reads: 
Avoid in education everything that is contrary to nature; 
the latter : Practice conformity to nature. 



Diesterweg. 143 

I believe the purpose of educatioD, hence also the pur- 
pose of the training of teachers, to be self-activity. 
Man — this is what I mean— is to be educated 
to self -activity; man is educated and in- activity, 
structed in the same degree in which he is educated and 
instructed to self-activity, and he is uneducated and un- 
instructed in the same degree in which he lacks self- 
activity. 

Self-activity of the pupils is the final, supreme aim of 
all true activity of educators; it is really ^e principle of 
human education. 

To this formal principle must be added a material 
one. Hence I say: Development of self-activity xn the 
service of the true and good or to the realization of the 
true and good in public Ufe, in the community of men. 

The fashioning of life according to the principles 'of 
truth, beauty, goodness in the highest energy of self- 
activity, is, I take it, the problem which man is called 
upon to solve. 



KULES OF INSTEUCTION. 

(From Diesterweg's " Guide for Teachers.") 

I. WITH EEGARD TO THE PUPIL (THE SUBJECT). 

1. Coj^FORM to the laws of nature. 

2. Proceed from the standpoint of the pupil, and from 
there carry instruction forward continuously without 
interruption, without breaks. 

3. Teach intuitively! [Appeal to the child's sense- 
perception and experience.] 

4. Proceed from the near to the remote; from the 
simple to the complex; from the easy to the difficult; 
from the known to the unknown. [Adapt your instruc- 
tion to the apperceptive power of the pupil.] 

5. Proceed in elementary order [inductively] not 
scientifically. Scientific procedure begins as a rule with 
the most general statements from which the particular 
and elemental is deduced. The elementary method be- 
gins from the particular and from there proceeds to the 
general. 

6. Pursue everywhere the formal as well as the mate- 
rial aim; interest the pupil through the same subject as 
many-sidedly as possible; unite particularly knowledge 
with doing and practice what has been learned until the 
mind has complete control over it. 

7. Consider the individuality of your pupils. 

144 



Diesterweg. 145 



ii. with reference to the matter of instruction 
(the object). 

1. Divide the matter of every study according to the 
standpoint and development laws of the pupil. 

2. Tarry particularly at the elements. 

3. In proving deduced statements return frequently 
to the first elementary foundation ideas and deduce the 
former from the latter. 

4. Divide every subject-matter in definite stages and 
small wholes. 

5. Indicate upon any stage several parts of the suc- 
ceeding one and without allowing a noticeable interrup- 
tion to occur, point out a few particulars in order to 
stimulate the pupil's desire for knowledge, without, 
however, gratifying it. 

6. Divide and arrange the matter in such a way that, 
wherever possible, in the new, upon the succeeding-stage 
the old recurs again which the pupil has learned up to 
that time. [Provide for reviews on every stage, as far as 
possible.] 

7. Connect subjects which are related in kind with 
each other. [Correlate !] 

8. From the thing to its sign [symbol], not vice versa. 
[First the idea, then the word or sign representing it.] 

9. In the choice of the form of teaching be guided by 
the nature of the topic. 

III. WITH reference TO EXTERNAL CONDITIONS, OF 
THE TIME, PLACE, ETC. 

1. Treat topics more one after another than one beside 
the other. 

2. Consider the (probable) future calling [state] of the 
pupil. 



146 Educational Creeds. 

3. Instruct (educate) in conformity to the demands 
of civilization. 



IV. WITH REFERENCE TO THE TEACHER. 

1. Endeavor to make instruction attractive (interest- 
ing). 

2. Instruct with force. [Leave an impression.] 

3. Never stand still. [Improve constantly; ''keep a- 
moving;" avoid stagnation.] 

1. The problem and end of education is harmonious 
development of all powers. "As physical nature un- 
folds its poAvers in accordance with eternal, 

d^veSpment. ^"^^^^^^^^^^^ laws, SO human nature is sub- 
jected in its development to similar laws. 
All sound pedagogy must be founded upon these laws. 
All i^nstriiction and all education must have a psycho- 
logical foundation / education and instruction must 
proceed in accordance with the same laws that nature 
itself follows. The method looks upon the soul of the 
child not as a tabula rasa that must first be written upon 
from without, nor as an empty, hollow vessel that is to 
be filled with foreign matter in order to contain some- 
thing, but as a real, living, self-dependent power that 
unfolds itself from the first moment of its existence, 
after its own laws." 

2. («) "Moral Culture is the pure unfolding of 
human willing through the higher feeling of love, grati- 
tude, and confidence as they express them- 

cSture. selves as germinating in the pure relation 

between child and mother. The aim of this 

culture is the moral perfecting of our nature; its means 

are exercises in the desire for moral feeling, thinking, 

and doing." 



Diesterweg. 147 

{h) "Intellectual Culture is the pure unfolding 
of luinian ability or our power of reason through a most 
simple habituating of its use. The aim of 
intellectual development is to produce in ^"^JJi^r^^^^ 
man clear concepts. The starting-point of 
knowledge is sense yerceytion, the end the raising of the 
sense-percept to the conceptj^ 

(c) " Physical Culture is the pure developihent of 
ability or the many-sided physical powers within man 
through the simple habituating of their use. 
The starting-point of this unfolding is move- cuu^e^.^ 
meiit; the aim, power, graceful carriage, and 
slcill in handicrafts and arts." 

3. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary 
conditions under which the mind educates itself, and 
gains power and independence. "Nature 
develops all the human faculties by practice, ^^a?tivitT' 
and their growth depends on their exercise." 



HERBART^S PEDAGOGICAL CREED. 

The aim of education is the formation of a moral- 
religious character. 

Method: Conform as educator to the laws governing 
human development. 

The aim of education is given and explained in the 
science of ethics : the ways and means are founded, in 
general, uipon jjsychologi/ ; in particular, upon 
insight and the laws of development of the individuality. 
Formation of character is essentially will- 
culture. In order to make it moral-religious it is neces- 
sary to develop a moral-7'eligious insight. In short, 
education aiming to form a moral-religious character 
consists chiefly in will-culture and intelligence-culture. 
That branch of education Avhich aims mainly at will- 
culture is called guidance and includes child-govern- 
ment and training. Intelligence-culture is essentially 
the office of instricction. Thus we speak of three inter- 
related offices of education: government, training, and 
instruction. 

How does the educator form the character of an im- 
mature individual ? How does he lead him to perfec- 
tion-seeking intelligence ? 

The first condition is a knowledge of human nature 
and particularly child-nature; furthermore, the educa- 
tor should be familiar with the laws govern- 

and child ing the mental and physical development of 
^ ^' his pupil. This is learned from exact psy- 
chology and a careful, constant, and sympathetic study 
of children. 

148 



Herbart, 



149 



The special aims which the educator must hear in 
mind if he wants to develop and form character are: 
(1) to cultivate will; (2) to make this will 
powerful and firm; (3) to direct the will to ^dev3op-^ 
the good. The completion of the character ^^^^' 
proper is a matter that lies beyond the sphere of the 
educator; it is for the pupil to realize himself in a ma- 




Herbart. 

turer age by constantly exercising control over himself 
through self-formed resolutions. 

How pedagogic activity is to be organized and to 
proceed may be learned from psychology. 
According to Herbart, character rests upon ^and^ 
resolu tion, and this is the result of reflection. ^^^^°^^^*- 
Resolving contains two elements or two different 



150 Educational Creeds. 

wills, as it were: an ohjeciive will growing ont of ivfcr- 
ests and a subjective will whose sonrce is i\\Q judgvient. 
The objective will may be likened to a river which 
flows out of the thought-circle. If its direction is to be 
changed you must begin at the source. The 
in^tnfcS. i"eans to this end is given in educative in- 
struction, the most faithful ally of moral 
guidance. 

The following examples may suggest thoughts as to 
how to counteract the incipient growth of a misdirected 
objective will : 

A boy spends his play hours in fishing, catching birds 

or butterflies; and he is in danger that his fine feeling, 

sympathetic heart will harden. Would pun- 

iUustration. ishment direct the content of his will to 

nobler pursuits ? Would it thoroughly cure 

him ? Certainly not. It would sooner increase the 

danger. The thoughtful educator pursues a different 

course. He seeks to build up a new interest in the 

thought-circle of the boy. He calls his attention to the 

beauty of flowers, explains to him their nature and 

various kinds, shows him how to raise plants and how 

to take care of them, how to press and dry them. The 

probabilities are that he will spend his recreation hours 

in cultivating plants, in botanizing, and in making a 

herbarium. 

Stimulate and develop in your pupils as many-sided 
as possible an interest in worthy objects. 

He, however, who follows only his interests without 
regard to their practical value or moral worth is a weak 
character. On the other hand, if our will is 
Character, constantly brought before the forum of judg- 
ment, if our conscience is judge and we ac- 
cept and follow out its verdict, on matter how hard 
it may seem to be, then results, as a product of two 



Her barf. 151 

factors (objective and subjective willing), the charac- 
ter. 

The formation of the subjective willing shows differ- 
ent stages of development: that of choice, holding fast 
to the willed object, resolution, maxim or 
rule of life, and principle. In this forma- subjective 
tion of character the pupil must be aided in ^"* 
various ways, as by habituation, good example, suitable 
occupation, admonition, explanation, and warning; above 
all, prayer is of importance here, and for the more ma- 
ture pupils the Bible and divine service. 

A character founds itself upon the foundation of inner 
self-dependence. In order to aid tlie maturing of this 
self-dependence by the above-named means 
(habituation, good example, etc.) there is but actmty. 
one way, that of the self-activity of the pupil. 
Only by his own activity in thinking and willing does 
man attain to self-dependence. Only self-activity can 
produce profound knowledge and free ability. The 
pupil loves nothing more than self-activity because it 
gives him the full enjoyment of his human power and 
dignity. 

Accordingly, it is a natural as well as rational princi- 
ple of education to incite pupils to self-activity. Adolph 
Diesterweg, for this reason, rightly declared the supreme 
principle of instruction to be: 

'' Lead your pupils to self-dejyendence through self- 
activity in the service of the true, the beautiful, and the 
good.'' 

The surest means for early character-formation or 
the laying of the foundation of character are educative 
instruction and educative guidance. Educative instruc- 
tion is the greater of the two: it is the principal means 
to the end of character-formation. 
(Adapted from an article by G. Froelihch.) 



TWO ANALYSES OF HERBART'S DIDACTICS. 



1. Instruction is to so form the pupil's circle of 
thought that right iudgment and right willing may 
grow out of it. 

2. Its specific object is to stimulate and develop many- 
sided, equilibrious (harmonious), direct interest. 

The following interests (sides of interest) must be 
considered : 

i 1, emperical, 
I. Interests of cognitions (knowledge) \ 2. speculative, 

(3. - 



sestbet 



ic. 



II. Interests of participation (associa- \ ^r gQ^JJ^ ^ ^^' 
tion with others), y^ religious. 



3. The matter of instruction is contained in the sci- 
ences. 

Tlie sciences are divided into two groups : historical and natu- 
ral sciences : 

(a) The matter furnished by the natural sciences serves to sup- 
plement, almost exclusively, the experience of the pupil; and 
hence supplies the sources of the interests of knowledge. 

(6) The matter furnished by the historical sciences serves to 
supplement both the pupil's experience and intercourse with 
others, particularly the latter; and hence, supplies the sources of 
the interests of participation or association with others. 



Her barfs Didactics. 153 



4. Instruction requires of the pupil attention, absorp- 
tion, and reflection. {Method,) 

'■ •' { apperceivmg. 

Absorption I ^^^^^°^f.«' 
^ { association. 

Reflection \ ^y^H"^' 
I method. 

5. The matter of instruction is brought home to the 
child, by employing either the things themselves, or 
surrogates (models and pictures of the things), or merely 
signs or symbols (language, etc.) [Means of Method.) 

6. To bring connection and unity into the various 
groups of thought, all instruction must be tending to a 
common center. {Concentric Instruction.) 

V. The procedtcre in the method of instruction is either 
analytic, or merely exhibiting (descriptive), or syn- 
thetic. 

11. 

0. Willmann, one of the best authorities on Herbart^s 
pedagogic ideas, gives the following analysis of the 
didactics: 

Instructio7i, 

1. Its procedure is with reference to the circle of 
thought of the pupil either 

analytic, or 

synthetic. 

2. It gives ahsorptio7ij as a first stage of many-sided- 
ness through 

showing (presenting) 

and connecting ; 
and reflection, as a second stage, through 
teaching (causing to know) 

and f)hiloso])hizing (causing to think and apply). 



154 Educational Creeds. 

3. It is according to the stages of the interest 

intuitive (addressed to perception) 
and continuous (far-following); 
According to the stages of desire 
elevating 

and entering into reality. 

4. With reference to the cog7iitions it develops 

the Sjurit of observatio7i, 
sjoeculationy 

and taste ; 
with reference to i:)articii)ation (love of and feeling of 
dependence upon others) it gives 

sympathetic participation, 
imhlic spirit, 

religiousness. 



BENEKE'S PEDAGOGICAL CREED. 

Beisteke considers pedagogy to be applied psychology 
and seeks to make psychology serviceable to pedagogy. 
Education, as he explains it, is almighty. 

He assumes that it is the duty of developed reason to 
raise undeveloped reason up to its own plane. The re- 
sultant definition of education is as follows: 
" Eduction is the inteutional exerting of an education! 
inftiience on the i)art of adults upon youth in 
order to elevate it to the hifjher stage of culture which 
those occupy and survey uho exert the influenced The 
importance with which he invests education is shown in 
his belief that it produces all good and all evil revealed 
in man. The human being, according to him, brings 
into the world only the capability to receive sense-im- 
pressions, to retain these, to connect, separate and group 
them according to their similarities and differences, and 
to elaborate them to higher mental forms, etc. The 
natural gifts are neither good nor evil; the educator 
must develop and unfold them and take care that they 
do not degenerate. 

Success of education depends upon clear conscious- 
ness of its effects, the Science of Education is the devel- 
opment of this consciousness to the highest 
degree. Knowledge of i^sychology furnishes and auxiUary 
explanations as to how an influence affects 
the inner development, Avhat of this remains as an inner 
talent (power), how the latter expresses itself and what 

IS5 



156 Educational Creeds. 

may be built upon it. But pedagogy must look also to 
logic for support in order to determine the perfection of 
thinking. Further, it must consult (Bstlietics for the de- 
velopment of aesthetic taste; ethics, for the establishment 
of the moral development ; the i)liilosopliy of religiofi, 
for the theory of religious culture. It must also borrow 
advice from ancdomg, j^hysiology, and j^atliology. 

The three real educators of man, according to Beneke, 
are (1) the natural environment, (2) fate, (3) human 
beings. Education by man is the only one 
^of^manf^ directly controllable and it has the advan- 
tage that it can press the other two " educa- 
tors " into its service, and this it must do. 

The three main questions which concern pedagogy 
and which it must answer are these: (1) what is the ob- 
ject and aim of education ? (2) What does 
^Pedagogy.^ the educator find before the beginning of his 
work ? (3) What means can aid the educa- 
tor to lead that which he finds to the aim. 



HERBART AND BENEKE. 

A Comparison- of Their Creeds with Reference 
TO the Theory of Instruction^. 

According to Beneke, the business of education is 
the perfection of the whole of human life, both phys- 
ically and mentally. Its main problem, „ , . 
1 .,,/,. ^ ' Relation of 

However, is the lormation and develop- education 

ment of the inner faculties or powers of the instruction, 
soul. Under education, he therefore treats of the 
training of the intellect, the emotions, and the will. The 
function of instruction, on the other hand, is to impart a 
definite objective content, whereby the pupiPs knowl- 
edge may be enriched and his skill perfected. 

Education and instruction are closely inter-related 
and must be mutually helpful. Education prepares the 
way for instruction by creating in the child 

habits of attention. Instruction, in turn . Mutual 

,1 11,. . ' helpfulness, 

must always be educative, at the same time. 

Through the imparting of ideas, instruction aids the es- 
tablishment of feelings and desires, hence, one of its es- 
sential purposes is the training of the emotions and the 
character. The matter of instruction must create in the 
pupil a "feeling of tension '^ ("spannendes Selbstge- 
fiihV interest), which impels him to self-activity. In- 
struction should furnish model combinations (concepts, 
theorems, ideals), which become authoritative standards^ 
producing new groups of concepts and series of ideas, in 

157 



158 Educational Creeds, 

accordance Avith their type. Thus, "if a pupil has 
clearly and distinctly grasped certain mathematical 
theorems, he may apply the same general perception of 
form, the same idea of clearness, not only to other mathe- 
matical problems, but to problems of life and language 
as well, so that nothing will henceforth satisfy liim which 
falls short of that ideal, and he will strain all his pow- 
ers in striving to realize it even in these other fields." 

The educative influence of instruction also depends on 
the personality of the teacher; especially the tone of his 
teaching (Lehrton), as well as on the whole management 
of the school. 

Herbart recognizes three educative activities, namely, 
government, training, and instruction, the highest of 
which is training. The aim of training and 
^o?«ces^^ instruction lies in the future, while gov- 
ernment has to do with the present. It 
maintains order, by removing whatever may tend to dis- 
turb the work of training and instruction. It comprises 
what is generally known as school discipline. 

Both Beneke and Herbart declare the formation of 
character to be the supreme aim of all education. Both 
are convinced that training and instruction 
compared. ™^^st constantly aid each other, and that all 
instruction must be of an educative nature. 
Beneke does not make a separate sub-division of govern- 
ment, but he supplements Herbart's idea of the relation 
of training and instruction, by calling attention to the 
importance of authoritative standards (of thinking, feel- 
ing, and willing), which result from certain models 
implanted in the pupil's mind. 

Beneke demands that instruction should lead the pupil 
to higher ideals, and fills him with a desire to live up to 
them more and more, and to use them, according to his 
strength and opportunity, in working for the progress 



Herhart and Beneke. 159 

of mankind. In connection with this general culture, 
or education for ideal manhood, there may be the train- 
ing for a special occupation or vocation in 
life„ One study may serve both ends. ms'trS^tioii. 
The acquirement of an inner perfection 
may be the means for the attainment of an external pur- 
pose, an object of special training, likewise certain ac- 
complishments acquired for the purpose of professional 
training (a musical education, for instance) may be of 
importance to a general, liberal education. 

Herbart finds the proximate aim of instruction in the 
producing of a many-sided, well-balanced, well-connect- 
ed, direct interest. He means by interest so pleasurable 
a feeling attending one's dealing with a subject that it 
will lead to continuous working at it. The many-sided- 
ness of interest helps to form the moral character, wliich 
is the ultimate aim of all educatioii. The special train- 
ing of the pupil for the mere sake of profit or bread-win- 
ning is not, according to Herbart, the business of the 
educator. 

Both Herbart and Beneke, accordingly, believe the 
aim of instruction to consist not in knowledge or skill, 
but in interest; or, as Beneke calls it, the Branches of 
'^feeling of tension.'^ Both put general cul- '^'^f'''' 
ture before special training. But Herbart ^^v^uls?^^ 
stated the aim of instruction and its relation to the gene- 
ral aim of education more pointedly and distinctly by 
giving an accurate and clear-cut definition of the many- 
sidedness of interest; the fundamental idea of his peda- 
gogics. Beneke, on the other hand, supplements the 
theory of Herbart by investigating more thoroughly the 
relation between special training as a preparation for a 
vocation in life, and as a general humane culture. 

Both Herbart and Beneke reject the old doctrine of 
formal discipline, which meant the development of the 



i6o Educational Creeds. 

so-called "faculties" of the mind — imagination, memory, 
reasoning, etc., — independent of the content of the sub- 
ject-matter of instruction. " Memory," for instance, 
says Beneke, " does not exist apart from ideas, it being 
merely their inner power of persistence; hence, any 
amount of training of this power for a certain circle of 
ideas will not increase, in the least, one's retentiveness 
in an entirely different circle of ideas." (This agrees 
with the results of modern psychology. See, e. g., 
James' Psychology, I. p. 664.) In like manner, Her- 
bart says: "Mathematical reasoning stays in mathe- 
matics, and grammatical reasoning in grammar; but the 
power of reasoning in any other subject must be devel- 
oped in its own way for that particular subject. 

Both, however, admit that intellectual culture ac- 
quired in one field of knowledge may be of use in the 
acquisition of knowledge in different fields. They ar- 
rive at this conclusion by different processes of reason- 
ing. Beneke, as was stated above, assumes that ideal 
standards attained in a particular study will lead the 
mind to desire the same perfection in other subjects, 
while Herbart bases it on the laws of reproduction, ac- 
cording to which ideas enter into association and help 
each other. Thus, if we have thoroughly studied some 
particular science, and then turn to another which con- 
tains matter of a somewhat similar and related nature, 
the ideas of the old subject will be reproduced in us, and 
help in the acquisition of the new material. 

With regard to educational values, Beneke is more 

explicit than Herbart. Like Dr. W. T. Harris, he 

divides the subjects of the curriculum into 

values of five groups, although his division differs in 

some essential points. Beneke's groups are 

(1) languages, (2) history, together with morals and 

religion, (3) mathematics, (4) natural sciences, and (5) 



Herbart and Beneke. i6i 

technical arts. "Every one of these groups," says Ben- 
eke, "has so peculiar and well-defined a didactic char- 
acter, that none of them can be used, not even as a 
passable substitute for any other." Therefore, these 
five groups must be represented in the courses of study 
of the lowest as well as of the highest classes of the 
school. Beneke values the study of languages higher 
than does Herbart, while he reduces the somewhat 
exaggerated estimate which the latter seems to put on 
mathematics. With regard to history, he differs essen- 
tially from Herbart, and his opinions on this study form, 
perhaps, the weakest part of his system. He divides 
history into "external" and "internal." The latter, 
which includes a philosophic view of the inner connec- 
tion of historic events, he regards as too difficult for a 
school study, as the pupil lacks the proper amount of 
introspection and experience to understand the process 
of human development. The only history left for the 
schools is, then, the "external;" in other words, a dry 
conglomeration of facts, names, and dates, which is 
hardly of any pedagogic value. This separation is 
utterly artificial, and quite foreign to Herbartian ideas. 
Beneke's remarks, on the educational value of the natu- 
ral sciences, including geography, as well as on the 
manual arts, are equtUly disappointing, and cannot be 
compared as to depth and thoroughness with the views 
of Herbart on the same subjects. 

With regard to this question, Beneke and Herbart 
differ materially from each other. Beneke admits that 
there are certain advantages in private in- 
struction, in so far as it can do greater jus- ^"Iwi/^* 
tice to the individuality of the pupil, and ^^'^^^^^<'^° 
has greater freedom in the selection of the subjects of 
study. But, on the otlier hand, class instruction gains 
much through the force of example, habit, and social 



1 62 Educational Creeds, 

interest. The intercourse of pupils in the school is the 
very best preparation for life in organized society. It is 
interesting to note that he qualifies his remarks by re- 
stricting them largely to the male sex. Boys, he thinks, 
need the education of the family and the public school; 
for girls, education in the family might be sufficient. 

Herbart, on the contrary, regards education essen- 
tially as the function of the family. The class teacher 
is too much inclined to look upon the class as a whole, 
and to neglect the individual pupil. Truly educative in- 
struction, in its full perfection, can be given only by a 
tutor in the home, he believes, and well-conducted pri- 
vate schools are to be preferred to public institutions. 
From a practical point of view, as well as for other 
considerations, the position of Beneke would seem to be 
more sound than that of Herbart, who may have been 
largely influenced by his own experience as a tutor. 

From this brief comparison of the pedagogic theeries 
of Beneke and Herbart, it appears that these two philo- 
sophical educationists are by no means op- 
posed to each other, nor do they show only a 
few points of contact. On the contrary, it was found 
that, while they materially differ on certain minor ques- 
tions, there is a substantial agreement concerning those 
matters which are fundamental. In some w^ays Beneke 
supplements and corrects Herbart's views, and from 
this point of view his system may be regarded as a de- 
velopment of Herbart's didactics. This is all the more 
remarkable, as the two systems are built uj) on entirely 
different psychological foundations, and it proves that 
Herbart's psychology is by no means the only one which 
can serve as the basis of a thoroughly sound and consist- 
ent system of education. 

(Adapted from O. E. Hummel's " Die Unterriclitslebre Benekes 
im Vergleicli zur piidagogisclieii Didaktik Herbarts.") 



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is published monthly, at $1.00 1 year. It is edited in the same spirit 
and from the same standpoint as The Journal, and has ever since it 
was started ia iSySbeen the t?tysi popular educational mo?if/ily ftiblzs/ied, 
circulating in every state. It is finely prmted and crowded with illus- 
trations made specially for it. Every study taught by the teacher is 
covered in each issue. The large chart supplements with each issue 
are very popular. 

EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS. 

This is not a paper, but a series of small monthly volumes, $1.00 a 
year, that bear on Professional Teaching. It is useful for those who 
want to study the foundations of education ; for Normal Schools, 
Training Classes, Teachers' Institutes and individual teachers. If you 
desire to teach professionally you will want it. Handsome paper 
covers, 64 pp. each month. The History, Science, Methods, and 
Civics of education are discussed each month, and it also contains all 
of the N. Y. State Examination Questions and Answers. 

OUR TIMES 

gives a resume of the imoortant news of the month — not the murders, 
the scandals, etc., but the news that bears upon the progress of the 
'vorld and specially written for the school room. It is the brightest 
and best edited paper of current events published, and so cheap that it 
'jan be afforded by every pupil. 30 cents a year. Club rates, 35 cents, 

*^* Select the paper suited to your needs and send for a fret 
sample* Samples of all the papers (40 cents wot th) for 20 cents* 

E.L. KELLOGG & CO., New York and Chicago. 



Spring and Summer School Celebrations 

EXERCISES, TABLEAUX, PANTOMIMES, RECITA- 

TIONS, DRILLS, SONGS FOR CELEBRATING 

EASTER, MAY DAY, MEMORIAL DAY, 

FOURTH OF JULY, CLOSING DAY 

IN THE SCHOOLROOM. 

40 Pages. Price, 25 Cents Postpaid. 

You have general exercises in your school, do you not? Then you need this 
book and should send for it now. It is Illustrated. It contains nearly onehwn' 
dred fresh, charming, mostly original selections. 



PARTIAL. TABL.E OF CONTENTS j 

May and the Flowers, 
The May Festival, 
Gathering Flowers 



Easter Song, 

Give Flowers to the Children, 

Easter in Early Days, 

Sir Robin, 

To the Flowers, 

Wreath Drill and March, 

Easter Time. ,, , ^^ „ v. i. 

Tableaux for Longfellow's King Robert 

of Sicily, 
A Bunch of Lilies. 
Greeting to May, 
A Call to the Flowers, 
A Carpet of Green, 
To the Cuckoo, 
To the Arbutus, 



The Return of the Wanderers, 

The Nation's Dead. 

In Memoriam, 

Zouave Drill, 

Program for Memorial Day, 

The Blue and the Gray, 

The Nation's Birthday, 

Stand by the Flag, 

Flag of Our Nation Great, 

Boy's Marching Song, 

The Poet's History of America, 

Etc., Etc- 



Fancy Dr ills and Marches. 

MOTION SONGS AND ACTION PIECES FOR ARBOR DAY, 

CHRISTMAS DAY, MEMORIAL DAY, AND 

PATRIOTIC OCCASIONS. 



I>rice iJS Oents Postpaid. 



THE liTEST, BRIGHTEST, AHD BEST BOOK OF DRILLS. 

Teachers who want something new and bright in the line of drills will 
certainly be greatly pleased with this book. One drill alone— Betz's Flag 
Grouping— has heretofore been sold for the price of this book, 25 cents. 



Fancy Ribbon March. Carl Betz. 
Hatchet Drill for Feb. 22. 
Christmas Tree Drill. 
Wand Drill. Mara L. Pratt. 
Delsarte children. M. D. Sterling. 



PARTIAL. TABLE OF CONTENTS t 

Wreath Drill and March. 
Rainbow Drill. 
Glove Drill. 
Tambourine Drill. 



ir.V^r^[,*"- The Mar^h Of the Red. White, and Blue, 



Flag Grouping and Posing. Carl Betz. 
Two Flag Dril 



Scarf Drill 



Xlso many Motion Songs and Action Pieces. Full directions with each ; 
fully illustrated. 



1 00 Lessons in Nature 
Around riy School 

By FRANK O. PAYNE 

Is the first book on Nature Study to be published 
that gives practical guidance and at. the same time is 
in accord with the best pedagogic thought. Wherever 
any work in nature is being undertaken this book 
should be in the hands of every teacher. 
• 
In Chap. I —Preliminary Lessoris in Observation ; Chap IL— 
Lessons on Leaves, Plants, and Fruits; Chap. 1 1 L— Lessons on 
Animals; Chap. IV.— The School Museum; Chap. V.— Rainy- 
day Lessons; Chap. VL— Lessons in the School Yard ; Chap. 
VIL— Walks with the Children; Chap. VI IL— Collections 
during Vacation ; Chap. IX.— Devices and Helps in Nature 
Study— Books of Reference, etc. 

In Chap. II, we find lessons in Seeds, pods, berries, propa- 
gation, the Daisy, the Gentian, &c. 

In Chap. III., some of the topics are Insects, the Beetle, the 
Fly, the Grasshopper, the Bee Family, Wasp, Ants, the Dragon 
Fly, the Turtle, Fishes, Birds, Rones, etc., etc. 

In Chap. V.— We have lessons on Water, Teeth, Celery 
Sulphur, Soap, Glass, a Rose, Rubber, and others. 

Mr. Payne is not only a well-known writer on 
science teaching but one of the most successful teach- 
ers of nature, and the book comes straight from the 
school-roo7n. It contains 50 valuable illustrations, has 
200 pages, is well printed, and handsomely bound in 
cloth. Price, $1.00. A copy to any teacher for exam- 
ination, 90 cts., postpaid. Special terms for quantities. 



E. L. KELLOGG & CO.. 61 E. Ninth St., New York. 



SIX LEADING 

Educational Periodicals 

THE SCHOOL JOURNAL. 

Published Weekly at $2.50 a Year. 

Established 1870, The best known and widest circulated weekly educational journal. 
Superintendents, principals, leading teachers and school boards take it for its invalu- 
able information covering the educational field both of news and methods. 

THE TEACHERS' INSTITUTE. 

Published Monthly at $1.00 m Year. 

Is tht journal of methods. Established 1878. Has the largest regular circulation 
of any monthly educational. Each issue has a large chart as a supplement— some of 
these are in colors, by the new process of color-photography and also by lithography 

THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 

Published Monthly at $1.00 a Yemr. 

Is designed specially for lower grade teachers, and is crammed with practical material 
on every phase of primary school work. It has large Language Pictures, material for 
Supplementary Reading, and other popular helps each month. Each number contains 
a fine chart in colors, or a large double-page language picture. It is finely illustrated 
and printed. 

EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS. 

Published Monthly at $1,00 a Year. 

This it not a paper ; it is a series of small monthly volumes that bear on Professional 
Teaching. It is useful for those who desire to study (he foundations of education ; for 
Normal Schools, Training Classes, Teachers' Institutes, and individual teachers. Ifyoit ; j! 

desire to teach /r«>y>M/V«rt//j' you will want it. Some valuable book on teaching is 
given free each year to every subscriber. Send for special circular with new course of , . 

study, list of inexpensive books on teaching, etc. It is unique as being the only peri- ' !i 

odical of its kind published. 

OUR TIMES. 

Published Semi-monthly at 50 Cents a Year. 

Gives a resume of the important news of the month — not the murders, the scandals, 
«tc., but the news that bears upon the progress of the world. It is better than anjr 
newspaper for the teacher and especially for the pupil. Only 50 cents a year. Club 
rates, 40 cents. Hundreds of teachers get up clubs each year. Samples for this pur- 
pose sent free. Correspondence solicited. 

ANIMALS. 

Monthly (^12 nos.'), is cents each, or $1.50 a year. 

Every number contains ten large photographs of Animals, 7 1-4 x 10 1-2 inches 
with valuable descriptive matter, printed on heavy paper— one side only. Invaluable 
for Natural History Lessons. 

^0* Besides these papers we publish the largest list 0/ pro/essi»n»l b»»kt and 
mids foT teachers. We keep /or sale all books published by other publishers 
at teachers'* discount. Send /or Catatognet. 

E. L. KELLOGG & CO., New York. 



